This season was, by far, the busiest and most challenging of Mark Nemish’s long career as the Capitals’ strength and conditioning coach.
It also proved to be his last.
Nemish told The Athletic that he’s leaving the team after 16 seasons to start his own health consultation business, Precision Health Performance.
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“You just know when it’s time,” he said at a Northern Virginia coffee shop on Monday morning. “I’ve been coaching high-level athletes — collegiate and professional — for 30 years.
“I’m 58 years old. Physically, I feel fantastic. But the grind,” he added, pausing. “The last thing I ever wanted was for someone to say, ‘Hey, dude, your time has passed you by.’”
Nemish’s decision to move on comes after the recent departures of head coach Peter Laviolette as well as assistants Kevin McCarthy and Blaine Forsythe. And with General Manager Brian MacLellan pledging to make substantive changes to the roster this summer, the Caps figure to have a different look on the ice, bench and in the weight room next season.
Nemish said he’ll be succeeded by his assistant, Zack Leddon, who just finished his seventh season in Washington. Leddon will be joined by Mike Wagner, who has been promoted from AHL Hershey.
In a high-pressure business where turnover is prevalent, Blaine Forsythe is an outlier. Now, the former #Caps assistant coach is prepping for something he hasn't had to do in 17 years: change teams.
— Tarik El-Bashir (@Tarik_ElBashir) April 20, 2023
“I’m so proud of what our department has built in terms of strength, conditioning, nutrition and all things performance-related,” Nemish said. “Zack and Mike will take over the reins; they’re young and energetic and capable. It’ll be a nice change for everybody.”
If you’re a Caps fan, you’ve no doubt heard Alex Ovechkin, Nicklas Backstrom, John Carlson and others take playful jabs to “Camp Nemo” over the years. Players affectionately refer to Nemish as ‘Nemo.’ His camp, however, is a place no one wants to visit.
Why?
For one, it means you’re working your way back from injured reserve. Two, the early morning workouts and on-ice sessions are tough — very tough. It can be so arduous, in fact, players sometimes joke about returning to the lineup early just to escape it.
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Asked if he got a kick out of Camp Nemo’s reputation, Nemish cracked a smile.
“Absolutely,” he said. “It’s satisfying. We’re training ‘em hard, but we’re also training ‘em smart. We don’t want to grind ‘em to the point where they’re actually fatigued.”
Fans who’ve attended training at MedStar Capitals Iceplex over the past decade-and-a-half are also familiar with the infamous Day 1 conditioning test — a grueling on-ice interval workout designed to measure a player’s fitness level coming into the season. That’s a Nemish creation, too.
Pass it, and you’re on to drills. Fail it, and you’re taking it again the next day and, perhaps, getting side-eyed by coaches and teammates, as well.
“What it does is, it makes players accountable for their on-ice fitness,” Nemish explained, “so they’re not just playing shinny all summer leading up to the first practice.”
Nemish said the test caused so much consternation he’d offer to do a mock test in the days leading up to training camp just so players knew they could pass it under pressure.
“Even then — and I’m talking about Ovi, Carly, all those guys — the day that we do it for real, they’d be nervous as all hell for some reason,” he said. “There’s been some really heavy hitters that have failed.”
Like many behind-the-scenes positions in pro hockey, Nemish’s job required long hours. The support staff often arrives long before the players. After practices and games, trainers are often among the last people to leave. A typical game day for Nemish began around 6 a.m. as he pulled out of his driveway in the suburbs and ended around midnight when he returned.
For 16 years in Washington and six years before that in Nashville, long days were just part of the job. But this season, he said, it felt like more of a chore.
“We had never had that many surgeries and serious injury before,” he said.
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Indeed, the Caps lost 441 man games — the team’s highest total since 1998-99.
Nemish’s departure means another one of the 52 names etched into the Stanley Cup under “Washington Capitals 2017-18” is no longer with the organization. Minus Nemish, there are now only 27 names from that season still in D.C.
“I didn’t tell the players I was leaving until our exit interviews,” Nemish said. “I thanked each of the guys from that 2018 team greatly for their efforts in putting my name on that Cup. I did not have one shift. I did not block one shot. They did it all.”
As Nemish reminisced about that run, he recalled one moment that stood out above all the others.
“Apart from actually hoisting the Cup,” he said with a grin, “it was actually when we beat Pittsburgh (in the second round). That was the most emotional I’ve ever been because it had been years of losing to them even when we had, in my opinion, better teams.
“There was an 800-pound gorilla that came off of everybody’s shoulders. That next series against Tampa — I’m in the room during every single intermission — I’ve never, ever been in a room where I’ve sensed so much calm, excitement and confidence.”
Fast forward five years and now Nemish is ready to author a new chapter. The purpose of his newly-formed company is to help people who’ve been told by their doctor to lose weight or lower their cholesterol, for example, but they don’t know how to go about doing it. Nemish, a lifelong fitness buff, said he was inspired by the pursuit of his own health goals a few years ago.
“My goal is to help those people through exercise, nutrition, sleep, any of those factors, get healthier and perform better,” said Nemish, who added a graduate certificate in nutritional science from Colorado State University to his resume in 2021.
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After 22 years, his dream job of working in the NHL has come to an end. But thanks to the thing that happened on a June night in Las Vegas — and the inscription on a silver trophy — he leaves knowing that his contribution will never be forgotten.
“To know that decades from now, my kids and grandkids can see their last name, their old man’s name, their grandfather’s name on the Cup,” Nemish said. “It’s pretty cool. That is really cool.”
(Photo of Mark Nemish with the Stanley Cup in 2018: Courtesy of Washington Capitals)
