Politics playing a role in Washington Capitals attempted move to Alexandria
It wouldn’t be a story about the United States’ capital without politics playing a part.
On Tuesday night, it was reported that the Washington Capitals plan on relocating to nearby Alexandria, Va. in the future. On Wednesday morning, Capitals owner Ted Leonsis and Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin revealed an artist’s rendering of what they expect the project to look like.
This coincides with the news that earlier this week, a dozen state lawmakers in Virginia voted unanimously to approve a plan to construct an eight-million-square-foot sports and mixed-use campus in Alexandria.
On Wednesday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, Frank Seravalli and Tyler Yaremchuk discussed the potential move and what it means for the future of hockey in D.C.
Tyler Yaremchuk: When I see a headline that says “The Capitals may move to Virginia,” I wonder what does that mean? How far away is that? Can you fill me in on the backstory of what is happening with the Caps?
Frank Seravalli: It sounds far away, but it’s really not. It’s somewhere between five and eight miles from their current home in downtown D.C. I think the Capitals were pretty antsy to make some significant improvements to Capital One Arena, located right in the heart of Washington’s Chinatown, one of the more uniquely set-up arenas in the NHL.
This news breaks that the team is having a press conference to move both the Caps and the Washington Wizards to Virginia. It’s not far from downtown, Washington, but it’s somewhat far from their season-ticket holder fanbase, so this will definitely be a big change. I think when it’s all set and done, they were saying it would be ready sometime in 2028.
What’s fascinating about this is there’s always some political machinations behind the scenes and levers being pulled. On the night the news broke, all of a sudden the Washington Mayor says they’ll put up $500 million towards an $800 million renovation to get both the Caps and the Wizards to stay.
There’s some thought out there that this is a hardball approach by Leonsis after just putting millions of dollars in upgrades into the arena, that he’s trying to strong arm the government into giving him what he wants. We’ll see how this plays out, but it sure felt like during this morning’s press conference, everyone was pretty interested in this new venture in Virginia.
You can watch the full segment and the rest of the episode here…