The Washington Capitals’ Alex Ovechkin is scoring goals, winning games and selling tickets, but he’s also helping introduce the game of hockey to a younger generation of players in Washington, D.C..

The Montgomery Youth Hockey Association has especially seen his impact in its girls program.

“The phenomenon we see down here, it’s largely because of the Capitals and Alex Ovechkin,” Montgomery girls hockey director Geof Hobart said. “You have younger girls who are expressing interest in hockey and don’t have family members who have played.

“I get a lot of emails that say, ‘My daughter’s 9 and she wants to play and what program do you recommend for her?’ You have brand new hockey families who don’t have a history with the sport. The girls love it. It’s really fun to see.”

Also rewarding for Hobart has been witnessing the development of those players. The Montgomery Youth Hockey Association has seen profound results through USA Hockey’s American Development Model.

At first, Hobart saw parents with a lot of questions about the ADM and its age-appropriate philosophies for cross-ice games, practicing in smaller areas and encouraging more puck touches among young players, but those parents soon came to understand the benefits of dividing up the ice at younger levels.

“Our program follows the ADM, and we’ve had great success and great feedback from parents and kids using it,” said Hobart, whose daughter is a high school senior and plays for the 19U team. “A lot of parents were skeptical about it at first, not having the full-ice games, but the cross-ice games and giving kids more chances to touch the puck has been successful for us.”

Montgomery has 12U, 14U, 16U and 19U girls travel teams, and has an additional program for all of its younger girls players. With the younger girls, the program holds 2-3 sessions a week that include station-style practices and cross-ice games.

“It’s 5-10 minutes each at five different stations,” said Hobart. “We keep them moving. It’s Hockey 101; skating is everything. We try to focus on everyone’s skating. To make it fun, we have small-area games.”

Montgomery has produced its share of talented players over the years. Jessica Lutz, who played for Switzerland in the Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games, played for Montgomery. They’ve also had a number of players advance to various levels of college hockey. 

Another point of pride for Hobart is how they’ve come to encourage girls to create camaraderie in the locker room.

“One of the things that was introduced, and I think it’s a terrific idea, is to require all the girls to dress in a locker room together,” Hobart said. “If they need help with skates or whatever, they can go out to the lobby. We wanted to give the girls the locker room social experience. I can tell you from experience, as it gets deeper in the season, the parents are waiting longer and longer for the players. They learn to love being in the locker room with their teammates.

“That’s one of the more rewarding experiences for my daughter. I really wanted that for her. You don’t get that necessarily with girls playing on boys teams. I’ve seen plenty of teams with one or two girls on them that sit by themselves and don’t interact.”

Hobart is hopeful Montgomery can introduce more girls to that experience and to hockey in general. Where Ovechkin begins, Montgomery can take over.

“We would love to grow more and have even more girls start,” he said. “We’ve had peaks and valleys, but our program is strong.”

Story from Red Line Editorial, Inc.