Carl Hagelin hangs his white skates proudly on both sides of his nameplate that hangs above his stall in the Washington Capitals locker room. He doesn’t stick out, blending right in as if he’s been here the whole year.
And in a strange way, he’s been here for a while; Hagelin is no stranger to this area, to this rink. For years he walked past Washington’s locker room, skated on Capitals ice and shook hands and traded pushes and shoves with his then-unfamiliar teammates.
As his eyes shift around the room and he exchanges a bit of conversation with Evgeny Kuznetsov and company, Hagelin comes off as quiet, humbled to be a part of a team that he had constantly fought with in the past, competitively and emotionally.