Andrew Cristall is back in a pair of skates just a few weeks after completing his third development camp with the Washington Capitals. The 20-year-old winger has begun his summer training in British Columbia with Kaivo Hockey alongside a handful of BC-based NHL players, including Connor Bedard, Kent Johnson, and former Caps forward Beck Malenstyn.
Cristall can be seen on the training program’s Instagram account participating in drills and scoring a beautiful breakaway goal in a small-sided game. Other notable players attending the workout sessions include Luca Cagnoni, Zach Benson, and Gage Goncalves.
Cristall has regularly worked out during summers with Bedard and Johnson, even playing roller hockey together on the Great Guys of the North Shore Inline Hockey League. Bedard, the 2023 first-overall draft selection, and Cristall, a 2023 second-round pick of the Capitals, have known each other since they were about six years old.
“We met up playing spring hockey for the Vancouver Vipers,” Cristall said in 2023. “The friendship kind of started from there, and then we started playing each other in Bantam. We’re rivals and then teammates in the spring. So we’ve kind of just grown up together, throughout hockey, and now we’re with each other all the time in the summer, so it’s pretty nice.”
Bedard has previously spoken about how Cristall is “probably the smartest hockey player” he has ever played with. Cristall will be looking to join Bedard in the NHL this upcoming season after he was one of the final cuts from the Capitals’ training camp last fall.
Cristall dominated the WHL with the Kelowna Rockets and Spokane Chiefs during the 2024-25 season, taking home the Bob Clarke Trophy as the league’s leading scorer with 132 points (48g, 84a) in 57 games. He followed that up with an equally dominant playoff run for the Chiefs, finishing with 41 points (21g, 20a) in 19 postseason games.
“He’s going to come in, if he has a camp like last camp, it’s going to be hard on the coaching staff to not keep him on their NHL team,” Caps GM Chris Patrick said of Cristall last month. “And if he’s not up here, he’s down in Hershey and getting adjusted to pro hockey. I think we’re going to see Andrew playing NHL games sooner rather than later.”
Cristall will come to camp and battle with other prospects, including Ivan Miroshnichenko, Bogdan Trineyev, Henrik Rybinski, and Ilya Protas, to fill whatever holes are left on the club’s roster. If he can’t crack the NHL lineup again, he’ll likely make his pro debut in the AHL with the Hershey Bears.
