Written by DCist Contributor Eli Resnick

Several recent Washington Capitals draft picks and free agent signings have combined their efforts to take their team on a five-game winning streak, tightening the defending champions’ hold on the league lead. Their team, of course, is the Hershey Bears, the Caps affiliate in the American Hockey League. However, far from a random factoid, this is terrific news for the Capitals, who can’t always get by on the heroics of NHL-leading goal scorer Alexander Ovechkin alone, and have relied heavily on their farm system already this season.

The success of their top minor league team is important to the Capitals because several of the Bears are young players expected to develop into long-term NHL players, and also because just about the entire team is under contract with the Capitals. Players regularly move between the two teams to fill in for injuries in this grueling sport.

So far this year, the Capitals have called up Eric Fehr, Tomas Fleischmann, Jonas Johansson, Alexandre Giroux, Jamie Hunt, Daren Machesney, Timo Helbling, Jeff Schultz, Dave Steckel and Lawrence Nycholat for stints in the NHL. None of these ten has looked entirely out of place, and Schultz and Nycholat have each played over twenty minutes in a single night on Washington’s Blue Line, indicating that they outplayed some of the regulars.

Nycholat also scored a beautiful goal on a Kevin Hatcheresque pinching one-timer off an Ovechkin pass, and is making a strong case to stay in Washington’s rotation. When and if the whole team is healthy, this would put him in competition for the last defensive roster spot with John Erskine, who played for Hershey at the start of this season, and Bryan Muir, who played for Hershey at the start of last season.

Photo by Eli Resnick