Capitals development camp ends.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

The final scrimmage of the development camp was played today. You can peruse the thoughts of bloggers who attended, including our own John Walton, here.

Story lines coming out of camp are; Orlov is AWESOME, Finley can play on the wing, Bruess is a huge pest, Perrault has really improved and Bouchard has regressed.

My thoughts and links after the jump.

I couldn't get to development camp this year, so all of this information is second hand. (If anyone who was there wants to share, please post your thoughts in the comments) Everyone from Washington main stream media writers to local bloggers has been really impressed with Mathieu Perreault in this camp. His skating is improved to the point that it can keep up with his stick handliing, leading to gushing like this.

The talk of the camp has been Dmitri Orlov. This kid is only 17 years old and the people watching were talking like he could step into the NHL next year. This took some of the shine off of John Carlson, which in my opinion is a good thing. JC has the skills to play in the N, but if he's got someone pushing him for time, he'll only get better. JC admitted that he hadn't worked very hard to get ready for this camp, but after the long Calder Cup run added onto his junior season, who could blame him.

Trevor Bruess impressed some people at this camp too. He gives some nice sound bites, too. When asked "How do you see yourself as a player," he responded, "Uhh, I, uhh, I don't have the vision and the hands and, like, the stuff that you develop that are things that can slow down the game or the patience. I have the work ethic and the size and the speed. I need to work on more the skill part of the game." Wow, give yourself some credit, Trevor, you signed a contract with the Caps, you obviously have some worth.

Video of his interview:

http://capitals.nhl.tv/team/embed.jsp?catid=976&id=45072

Teka at Talk Hockey to Me, had some not so nice things to say about Jake Hauswirth comments during their tour of DC. I don't know, I'm kind of impressed that a hockey player knew that the Capitol is where bills were passed.

http://capitals.nhl.tv/team/embed.jsp?catid=976&id=45050

Joe Finley was moved to left wing for the final scrimmage, supposedly because Della-Rovere and Gustaffson got hurt. In an interview he admitted that someone had talked about making that change more permanent, and he wasn't opposed to the idea. Do we have the next Dustin Byfuglien here?

Camp wrap-up video by Mike Vogel; interviews with Holtby, Finley, Bouchard & J.Carlson.

http://capitals.nhl.tv/team/embed.jsp?catid=976&id=45098

Francois Bouchard was pretty much invisible at the camp. He was expected to impress against this level of competition. If he doesn't want to lose his spot, he needs to turn up the burners this summer.

Anton Gustaffson hurt himself out of camp for the second straight summer. This year it's a concussion. The hunt for a nickname begins. Might I suggest Anton Glassjawoffson? (Pic courtesy of Caps in Pictures, I got the idea for a nickname from another board, but I can't find it now to give credit where credit is due.)

Micheal Dubuc had a great camp scoring 7 goals in 3 scrimmages. He was a pretty good scorer in the ECHL last year, 58 points in 49 games. He might be ready for second line duty in Hershey this season. He also had the insight that the Caps always knew that he could score, so he was going to have to show them that he could produce in other areas as well. It's good to see a player trying to improve on things that he doesn't do well.