Anyone who reads the official Washington Capitals discussion board should know who SurreyLily is and that she has jumped the pond from England to DC to see the Washington Capitals live.

She has been a member of the board since Feb 9, 2011 and has almost 9500 posts since joining.  Thanks to her gracious hosts (Detroit_Caps_1908 & Lady_1908) who have offered up their place for her to stay during her two-week visit, she got to see her first live game against the LA Kings on Feb 16.

During her two-week stay, her time here is packed with lots of Caps related events.  Not only is she able to see the Caps live, but she has been able to finally put a face to names she has interacted with over the years though cyberspace.  Speaking with Lily about her first game, she spoke about how emotional it was for her.  Being with so many fans, and seeing the players up close during the warmups brought such happiness and emotion that it could hardly be explained.  Of course any Caps fan should know already what she experienced.  J  The highlight so far has been meeting all the other Caps fans.  The kindness and generosity that has been show the her has in her words “I’m blown away and over-awed by it all”.  One of the things she is most happy about is being a catalyst for all these Caps fans from the discussion board together.  They may not have met face to face otherwise.

How did Lily become a Caps fan from such a far distance, having never been in DC?  During a less pleasant time in her life, she would be up late at night flipping through the channels and usually landed on ESPN.  Gradually the enthusiasm and passion of  hockey had taken her over and she looked forward to games and ended up rekindling in her a fighting spirit.  During that time, ESPN was promoting three players.  They kept trying to ram Cindy Crosby down everyone’s throat, Tim Thomas, who she had a slight crush on at the time, and Ovi as Cindy’s big, bad rival.  This was when ESPN was doing all of those funny adverts and she had fallen in love with Ovi and his sense of humor.  Ovi is what brought Lily to the Caps.

Not only has Lily been to a number of Caps events like practices at Kettler, but she also was able to make it up to Hershey to see the Bears defend the Den on Sunday.  While the Bears lost 6-3, Slapshot did make an appearance for a mascots game with brooms during the second intermission.  She also attended the Caps games on Feb 22 against the Coyotes, and will be attending the game on the 24^th against the Habs (she will also be able to attend the chalk talk and watch warmups from the pentaly box).

Then sadly she heads back to England on Saturday the 27^th.  She won’t be going home empty-handed though.  Not only will she have the priceless memories of her tip, but I’m told she will be going back with a team signed picture of Ovi, one that I had taken while at MSG during the 2014-2015 season.  I’m pretty jealous, but I’m more happy for her to have such an awesome gift.

By Robert Kruck