Hail to the Chief.
Last season, the Washington Capitals adopted Eric Church‘s hit song “Talladega” as their victory song after goalie Charlie Lindgren replaced starter Darcy Kuemper in the net midway through the season.
At first it wasn’t really clear why they chose the North Carolina native’s song. Church doesn’t really have any connection to Washington DC, and the Capitals goalie is from Minnesota (though maybe he’s just a big NASCAR fan?)
But as it turns out, the version of “Talladega” that the team played in the locker room after a win was actually recorded by Lindgren himself. While he was playing college hockey at St. Cloud State University, Lindgren formed a band called the Michisota Boys with his then-teammate Ben Storm. The duo released covers of several popular country songs, including “American Love Story” by LANCO and “What I Need to Do” by Kenny Chesney.
And shortly after Lindgren made his first NHL start for the Montreal Canadiens, the Michisota Boys released their cover of – you guessed it – “Talladega” by Eric Church.
Now, this next part is speculation, but my guess is that his Capitals teammates somehow found out about the video and got a kick out of it, and it became somewhat of an inside joke among the team. So when Lindgren finally got the start, and got his first win as the Caps goalie, the team decided to celebrate their teammate with…his own cover of the hit song.
Sounds like something that would happen in a locker room, right?
But anyway, Lindgren once again entered this season as the starting goalie for the Caps, before being injured on January 10 in a game against his former Canadiens team.
Last night though, Lindgren returned for his first start since going on injured reserve, and delivered a 3-0 shutout of the Seattle Kraken on the road at Climate Pledge Arena.
So naturally, the team had to celebrate with a singalong of Lindgren’s Michisota Boys cover of “Talladega” in the locker room after the victory.
So much agape love 🫶#ALLCAPS pic.twitter.com/xVPAmHitrb
— Washington Capitals (@Capitals) January 24, 2025
The song has obviously been a hit for Church since it was released on his The Outsiders album back in 2014, the fourth single from the album and his fourth #1 single of his career.
But Church revealed a couple years that the song was actually originally supposed to be about Daytona instead of Talladega – they just couldn’t make the word “Daytona” fit right.
“Ironically, when I wrote that song, I was on the bus at a festival on July 4th in Daytona. The Daytona July 4th race was happening, and we were watching it.
I was with a songwriter of mine. And we were watching the race, and they showed the infield and you had all the people in their campers, they had the flags… I was like man, it was just like a music festival. It was like Woodstock.
And we started talking about it, and I was like, well we could just write this…
We couldn’t get Daytona to line up right. For whatever reason Talladega lined up better. So we wrote it to that.
We kinda picked a path using those pictures and wrote the song.”
Of course, the song isn’t really about a NASCAR race it all. It’s about those memories that you make with your friends that last forever, the ones you find yourself longing for in the days and years after they’ve passed:
“It’s not about racing… could it have been football, could it have been soccer. It doesn’t matter.
It’s about being with the people and experiencing that and letting that be a memory marker for their life. And that’s really what it was.”
Kinda like the memories that the Caps are making in the locker room every time they sing along.