How ex-Capitals teammates reconnected over hockey’s ‘secret’ remedy
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Greg Wyshynski, ESPN
ON THE ICE, they were vital role players for the Washington Capitals.
Off the ice, they were simply the Chums.
Forwards Eric Fehr and Jay Beagle and defenseman Karl Alzner played together from 2008-15 during the Capitals’ “Rock the Red” era, when Washington teams had no shortage of star power, personality and playoff appearances. Beagle and Fehr were depth forwards known more for their checking than their offense. Alzner was more prominently featured as the team’s top “defensive defenseman,” logging plenty of minutes alongside star blueliner John Carlson.
The Chums did everything together on the road, from dinners to battling the tedium of long plane rides. Beagle said that while NHL players form bonds with teammates in every dressing room, these bonds felt different.
“Really looking back at it, those years with those guys were some of the best years of my life, just playing hockey and having those friendships,” he said. “It was so special.”
Only Beagle was still with the Capitals when they won the Stanley Cup in 2018. Fehr left as a free agent in 2015. Alzner did the same in 2017.
“We were super tight,” Alzner said. “Then you notice that when you stop playing together, you just don’t talk to the guys nearly as much. You miss it.”
“Life catches up to you,” Fehr said. “You just get too busy.”
So the Chums drifted, until something unexpected reunited them recently. Fehr, Beagle and Alzner are all involved with LactiGo, a topical muscle recovery and sports performance gel that they say is gaining popularity among NHL players. Fehr is on the board of directors for LactiGo, while Beagle and Alzner are active investors. Fehr is also on the board for Ethoderm, the pharmaceutical side of the company.
As rewarding as they hope this business can be, becoming teammates again has been its own reward.
“It feels like we’re still playing together,” Alzner said. “Even though we’re not talking hockey specifically, we have that same cadence that you would have if you were talking to a current teammate. Having had an opportunity to try and succeed on the ice and now having it off the ice is pretty special.”
NHL PLAYERS ARE CONSTANTLY being pitched with financial opportunities. Not all of them work out.
“There were a few of us in Washington, right at the beginning of my career, we all put some money into something and we all lost it. A good lesson, right away,” Alzner said. “Right from there, I was a little bit gun-shy about what I was going to put my money into, especially after I stopped playing. It’s so hard to figure out. You could make money. Or you could lose all of your money.”
The first one to get involved with LactiGo was Fehr. He was playing for the AHL San Diego Gulls in 2017-18 when he was pitched a product he hadn’t heard of before. Teammate Michael Liambas brought him LactiGo, which Liambas was using to revive weary legs.
“You get a bunch of these things coming your way when you’re playing pro hockey. People always bringing you stuff,” Fehr recalled. “And then I used it, and I’m like, ‘This is crazy.’ My legs were so loose, so good. I started sharing it with teammates and buddies.”
Fehr brought it to the Chums. Beagle was skeptical until he considered the source.
“You get pitched a lot of things when you’re playing. A lot of weird, random things. This was one I tried out, because it was coming from Fehr,” Beagle said. “He’s such a good guy. Like, a good human. So when he calls, you answer. And when he says something, you take it seriously, because he lives with integrity.”
Alzner was around 31 years old when Fehr pitched him and was feeling the burdens of being a veteran skater.
“My legs were starting to get … heavier,” he said. “Games were getting tougher. I hated going into practice feeling crappy, needing a couple of drills to them to come back. Going to morning skate and then it’s, ‘Surprise, my legs suck today.’ So I decided to try it out.”
Alzner was something who tried everything. Cold baths to massaging boots. He was recently reminiscing with an old teammate from Montreal about the guys using “pickle juice,” which was “literally just water with menthol in it to make their legs tingle.” Beagle recalls Alzner coming to offseason workouts with every fitness and diet fad, from low carb to no breakfasts to all manner of legal supplements.
So Alzner’s interest caught Beagle’s attention, too. If the guy who is constantly looking for the next thing settles on something, that caught Beagle’s attention.
“If you don’t know the guy, you wouldn’t really understand it,” Beagle said. “But when he gets excited about something and stays with a product for this long too, it’s a testament to how good the product must be.”
Fehr had inquired about investing in the company, but he said that founder Kevin Atkinson rebuked him. After about a year of pestering, Fehr was asked to help buy out a partner. Then he put another group together to buy out another investor, moving up to become one of LactiGo’s directors.
Alzner expressed his interest in investing, and Fehr put him in touch with Atkinson. But he had to know more about how LactiGo worked.
“It wasn’t originally even about the company. It was like, ‘My team needs to use this, because we’re not good,'” he said. “I’m one of those people that just really likes to dig in and understand why things do what they do.”
When Alzner found out that his old teammate Beagle was involved with LactiGo as well, that clarified things for him.
“When Beags got involved, you know it must be legit. Let’s just say he doesn’t really invest in … anything,” Alzner said with a laugh. “Me and Beags go way back with what we always called ‘per diem management’ on the road. If we can save money somehow, we’re saving money.”
With the Chums reunited, the next step was trying to make their product a success.
The first step was creating awareness for something players liked to keep to themselves.
“Everyone who uses it doesn’t want their competitor to use it,” Beagle said. “And unless you’re an unbelievable teammate, you don’t want even your own teammates using it in training camp because you want to be better than them, right?”
“It’s one of the best-kept secrets in hockey, and that’s the struggle we have,” Alzner said. “People want it for their own benefit and don’t want anyone else to use it.”
BOSTON BRUINS DEFENSEMAN Kevin Shattenkirk said he was always “just kind of an ‘au naturel’ guy” when it came to muscle recovery.
“I had never really put any sort of ointments or anything on my legs for games,” he said.
Shattenkirk played with Alzner in Washington back in 2017. About two years later, Alzner reached out with a pitch to try out LactiGo while Shattenkirk was playing with the Tampa Bay Lightning.
“I felt like there was something definitely there. Something different,” Shattenkirk said. “I thought at first maybe it was like a little bit of a placebo effect. But the more I understood the science behind it, then it all started to make sense.”
Veteran forward James van Riemsdyk became an investor in the product after using it.
“There were a few of us in Philly, but basically the whole team in Toronto was using it,” said van Riemsdyk, now a winger for the Bruins who recently passed 1,000 games played in the NHL.
When Shattenkirk was watching the U.S. men’s world juniors team celebrate its 2024 championship, he couldn’t help but notice the vibrant green-capped LactiGo cans on a table in that locker room.
“I didn’t know guys that age got tired on the ice, but it’s good to see that other people are believing in it,” he said.
When Shattenkirk signed with the Anaheim Ducks, he found teammate Vinni Lettieri was using it. That surprised him because he hadn’t known many other players that did.
Shattenkirk said he believes it’s one of the best-kept secrets among players.
“That’s not limited to hockey. It’s in all sports, really,” he said. “It’s taken a little bit of a long time for it to break through because those who’ve had it don’t really want to give it to the other guys. It’s kind of like your ace in the hole.”
Fehr said that’s been the biggest challenge in trying to market LactiGo. When an athlete believes they have an advantage, they don’t exactly want to share it.
“It’s like a secret,” he said. “We have UFC fighters using it all the time, but they don’t want the other UFC fighters to be using it too. So nobody talks about it.”
Alzner likened it to gaining inside information about an opponent as a hockey player.
“If you watch a video of somebody on a faceoff and you see his ‘tell,’ then you feel like you have an advantage. You don’t really want to let anybody know your secret,” he said. “Even on a team, you sometimes want to be better than your teammates, right? You wanna be the person that gets more ice time and all that stuff. So it’s almost like you’d almost rather not everybody use it because you want to be better than everybody else.”
But the other issue with athletes is their persnickety nature. If they add something to their routine that coincides with success, it’ll remain part of that routine. If that success turns sour, then it’s suddenly a candidate for deletion.
“That’s the problem with the hockey guys,” Fehr said. “They could put this stuff on, go out and feel the best they’ve ever felt. And if they’re a minus-3 the next game, they’ll never use it again.”
FEHR SAID THAT he and his other investors get it. They played the game and had their own idiosyncrasies. In fact, they hope that NHL experience helps build confidence for athletes that are curious about their product.
“Realizing that it’s a bunch of hockey guys behind it, that’s kind of a cool story,” Fehr said of Alzner and Beagle. “That’s the best part of this whole thing. It’s been great to stay in touch with them, but also to have a common project that we’re working on at the same time.”
They were teammates. They were Chums. And now they’ve been reunited in a way none of them had anticipated, and it feels just like old times.
Alzner said the players’ business venture has a familiar cadence for them.
“It’s same way an NHL season feels. We’re battling so hard to try and get this thing to where we want it to go,” he said. “Like in a season, there are ups and downs. One week is awesome. Then you go a week waiting for the next thing to happen. We went through the same thing as teammates, in a different way.”
Fehr said the dynamic between the three former Capitals is the same as when they were playing.
“Beags is a quiet guy, always thinking. Alzner is always making new connections and contacts, because he’s an outgoing guy. I kind of do as much work as I can and then delegate to the people in their strong areas,” he said. “It’s been a nice dynamic, and one you’d probably have seen on the ice.”
Alzner said the project has allowed the trio to learn things about each other they hadn’t known as players.
“It’s been fun to see how our brains work outside of the rink now,” he said. “I think a lot of guys go through all these different business ventures with teammates, they don’t necessarily work out and then things peter out between them. But this has been such an exciting ride so far. It’s pretty special to do this with them.”
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Ryan McGee
Inspirational thought of the week:
Time everlasting
Time to play B sides
Time ain’t on my side
Time I’ll never know
Burn out the day
Burn out the night
I’m not the one to tell you what’s wrong or what’s right
I’ve seen suns that were freezing and lives that were through
But I’m burning, I’m burning, I’m burning for you
— “Burnin’ For You,” Blue Oyster Cult
Here at Bottom 10 Headquarters, currently located behind the huge pile of to-go containers that Jess Sims brings home from all of her “College GameDay” road eats segments, we know that where there is smoke, there is also fire. And barbecue. And ash. But hopefully no ash on the barbecue.
There are a lot of chairs being barbecued in college football these days. Hot seats that became kindling, and way too early for an October fall harvest bonfire. UCLA and Virginia Tech became the first FBS teams to part ways in-season with their head coaches, one a legendary former player and the other a legendary former assistant coach. And that has led to a hunka hunka burning “Who’s Next?” hot seat lists.
It isn’t even really CFB Week 4 yet and hot seats are already… pic.twitter.com/WvZIxzD7fs
— Ryan McGee (@ESPNMcGee) September 14, 2025
It’s enough to make one, well, take a seat, and pause to contemplate their place in this world. Might one day we wake up to find an athletic director standing in the door of our office with a pink slip? Or a booster who sells cars and thinks he’s an expert on the spread offense standing in our door with a buyout check? Or Lane Kiffin standing in the door of our kitchen with a tape measure and fabric samples? And … wait … as we sit here … did someone spill some Tabasco on this chair or did we accidentally get some muscle rub in our drawers?
With apologies to Navy O-lineman Connor Heater, Ole Miss D-tackle Jon Seaton and Steve Harvey, here are the post-Week 3 Bottom 10 rankings.
The Amherst Amblers fell to 0-3 via a 47-7 loss at Iowa, which was also Kirk Ferentz’s 206th victory, making him the winningest coach in Big Ten Conference history. It was a fitting coincidence considering that Ferentz took the Hawkeyes job while the original Minutemen were still in Massachusetts.
The Bearkats kouldn’t enjoy the bye week on their kalendar bekause they still kouldn’t kover the spread against Open Date U. Now they will kombat Texas and kuarterbacking konundrum Arch Manning.
There are currently 11 0-and-something teams in the FBS, and five reside in #MACtion. Sources have told Bottom 10 JortsCenter that those teams have all asked Ohio if they can have the contact info for West Virginia’s scheduling guy.
In related news, sources are also telling us that after firing head coach DeShaun Foster, UCLA officials attempted to see if the NCAA would let them return to the Pac-2, but their calls kept getting kicked to voicemail because the NCAA lines were tied up with all of the UCLA players ringing the transfer portal hotline.
Since their dramatic run to the College Football Playoff national title game, the Irish are 0-3. It’s not an ugly 0-3. It’s 0-3 against three ranked teams by a combined 15 points — and the two losses this season are by a combined four points. But with no conference championship at their disposal and only one ranked opponent remaining on their schedule, the Irish CFP safety net is thinner than the margin of whether Rudy was or wasn’t offside.
Virginia Tech spent the offseason having its roster raided like a rum runner boat boarded by Jack Sparrow, lost a game to the son of its legendary coach, got run over by Vandy, got blown out by supposed little brother in-state school Old Dominion and fired its head coach so early in the season that the players who were left from the first transfer portal raid could start their own transfer portal exit if they wanted. My pal Marty Smith hasn’t been this upset since I accidentally spilled Swiss Miss on his white Air Jordan Dior’s.
7. Oregon Trail State (You have died of dysentery) (0-3)
Full disclosure: I am currently writing this in a hotel room in Corvallis, where I’m working on a “College GameDay” feature about the platypus trophy that the Beavers and Ducks will play for this weekend. I am … pretty … sure … they’re … messing … wItH … THEE … hOtEl … WHYFY … 2 … kEEp … mE … frum … FY-LING … this … STorY …
I don’t want y’all to get too excited, but I am looking at the schedule and on back-to-back Tuesday nights in November, Weeks 12 and 13, Akron hosts UMess and State of Kent. That rapid clicking you heard was me checking on hotels and flights and then emailing the GameDay honchos to try to convince them to do shows from Akron with me for seven straight days. That one solitary click you heard was them hanging up on me.
The Golden Flashes in the Pan lived up to that name, constructing a NSFW 21-play, 93-yard, 12-plus-minute drive to take a 28-24 lead over the Buffalo Bulls Not Bills with 2:38 remaining … and then surrendering 76 yards on eight plays in 1:29 to lose their 24th straight FBS game, 17th straight MAC game and 11th straight conference game at home. That’s not NSFW, that’s NC-17. Shoutout to a year ago, when the Flashes’ upcoming visit to Florida State would have been the Pillow Fight of the Week.
Speaking of NC-17, have y’all peeped Florida’s schedule? It’s the scariest thing I’ve seen since that time my family visited a Florida truck stop and my daughter bought what she thought was a souvenir rubber alligator, but then a few miles down the road it bit the dog.
Waiting list: Do You Know The Way to San Jose State, Northworstern, My Hammy of Ohio, Western Not Eastern or Central Michigan, Kennesaw Mountain Landis State, No-vada, the team that barely beat No-vada, Baller State, We’re Not In Kansas State Anymore, replay reviews that make on-field refs quit.
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Andrea Adelson
Dabo Swinney defended his program, which has started 1-2, during a fiery news conference Tuesday, saying, in part, that if Clemson was tired of winning “they can send me on my way.”
The Tigers started the season ranked No. 4 with College Football Playoff hopes but fell out of the Top 25 this week after losing to Georgia Tech 24-21. They opened the year with a 17-10 home loss to LSU and trailed Troy at halftime in Week 2, also at home, before rallying to win.
“Hey, listen, if Clemson’s tired of winning, they can send me on my way,” Swinney said. “But I’m gonna go somewhere else and coach. I ain’t going to the beach. Hell, I’m 55. I’ve got a long way to go. Y’all are gonna have to deal with me for a while.”
Clemson has not been in sync on offense, with third-year starting quarterback Cade Klubnik struggling to find rhythm and consistency, and the defense is still learning to adapt to new defensive coordinator Tom Allen.
Swinney said Tuesday that he was confident his team would respond, starting Saturday against Syracuse, because that is what his program has done during hard moments. But he also had a message to critics who have questioned where Clemson goes from here after two tough losses.
“I would just say, if you don’t believe in us because we’ve lost two games down to the last play and we’re 1-2? You didn’t believe in us anyways, so it don’t matter,” Swinney said. “You weren’t all-in anyway.”
Swinney pointed out that in his 17 years as head coach at Clemson, he has had one bad season — going 6-7 in 2010. In 13 of the last 14 years, Clemson has won 10 or more games. That lone season without 10 wins came in 2023, when Clemson started 4-4 but wound up winning five straight to finish 9-4.
“All we’ve done is win,” Swinney said. “We’ve won this league eight out of the last 10 years. Is that not good? I’m just asking. Is that good? To win your league eight out of 10 years, to go to the playoffs seven out of 10 years, be in four national championships, win it twice. Yeah, we’re a little down right now. Take your shots. I’ve got a long memory. We’ll be all right. We’ll bounce back.”
Swinney pointed out all the other times Clemson has rebounded from difficult losses — including 2021, after losing to Georgia to open the season, and last season — winning the ACC title and making the 12-team CFP after losing to South Carolina in the regular-season finale.
Clemson lost to Texas in the first round of the playoff 38-24, but the bulk of its team returned for 2025, making the Tigers the heavy favorite to repeat as ACC champions. Instead, the season has not started the way anybody expected.
“If we stink because we haven’t played for the national championship since January of ’20, well, I guess we stink,” Swinney said. “But why are we held to a different standard from all these other teams out there who ain’t ever won nothing?”
Swinney has had to fight off questions about his program nearly every year since it last made the playoff in 2020.
In 2023, Swinney made similar comments about leaving Clemson after “Tyler from Spartanburg” called into his radio show and wondered why the school paid over $10 million to go 4-4.
“I work for the board of trustees, the president and the AD, and if they’re tired of me leading this program, all they got to do is let me know. I’ll go somewhere else where there is an appreciation,” Swinney said at the time. “I don’t know if it’ll be here, but it’ll be somewhere.”
On Tuesday, Swinney returned to the missed plays his team made in the two losses that could have made a difference and said he continues to have “faith in the storm.”
“We’re not perfect, and we may suck this year,” Swinney said. “We may lay a freaking egg and go 6-6. But I don’t think so. I know that’s going to disappoint a lot of people, but I don’t think so. The reason we are the best program in college football is because we’ve always battled. We’ve always responded.
“Let’s respond like we always have and let the story be written.”
Three weeks of college football down, and the race for the Heisman Trophy is even more wide open than it was at the start of the season, according to oddsmakers.
Oklahoma quarterback John Mateer is the new favorite for the award at several sportsbooks, with ESPN BET showing +850 odds as of Tuesday afternoon. At some other shops, though, Miami QB Carson Beck is the favorite, getting as short marketwide as +700 at BetMGM.
Either way, it’s the longest odds for a Heisman favorite at this point in the season since at least 2012, according to data compiled by ESPN Research from SportsOddsHistory.com; the previous longest favorite was LSU running back Leonard Fournette at +500 heading into Week 4. It’s largely in line with how bookmakers saw the Heisman race playing out, as Texas QB Arch Manning was the longest preseason favorite in over 15 years at +650.
Manning’s odds to win the trophy have fallen precipitously amid struggles in his first three weeks as the full-time Longhorns starter, as he currently ranks tied for 15th on the board at +3000, per ESPN BET. Due to his name recognition and overall popularity, he is still the most-bet player in the market by tickets and handle at BetMGM and DraftKings, making him a liability with the books.
South Carolina QB LaNorris Sellers also was a popular play for bettors before the season and is “currently our biggest liability for the Heisman market,” according to ESPN BET senior trading director Adrian Horton. After he was injured in the Gamecocks’ 31-7 loss against Vanderbilt, Sellers’ odds have lengthened all the way to +5000 from +1400 before the season. Cade Klubnik, who was the second favorite (+900) coming into the campaign, has seen his odds fall all the way to 100-1 amid poor play and a 1-2 record for his Clemson Tigers.
Aside from LSU QB Garrett Nussmeier, who moved from last week’s favorite to tied for third on the board at +1300, the new crop of favorites features somewhat less liability for sportsbooks. Mateer, Beck and Oregon QB Dante Moore (also +1300) were not overly popular preseason plays and have not picked up a ton of momentum with bettors despite strong starts to the season. Moore, for example, is the 10th-most-bet player by handle at ESPN BET but does not even crack the top 10 at either BetMGM or DraftKings.
There are, however, two names to watch outside of the quarterback position as the Heisman race heats up. Ohio State wide receiver Jeremiah Smith (+1800) and Notre Dame RB Jeremiyah Love (+6000) are both listed as significant liabilities at BetMGM, and Love, in particular, has gotten significant action at ESPN BET. “That will have us keeping a close eye on the Irish running back,” Horton said.
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