On Tuesday, August 16th, 2022, members of the Washington Capitals Marketing Team joined Rink2Reef® at Wylder Hotel on Tilghman Island for a reef build day. Team members constructed oyster restoration reefs with broken ice hockey sticks, many from the Washington Capitals organization. Along with the Rink2Reef build day, team members also…

Founded in 2017 by Marine biologist Bob Wasno, Rink2Reef is a unique oyster restoration program that utilizes hockey sticks and other landfill-bound materials and repurposes them into oyster restoration habitats. After hearing about the organization from a friend in Florida, Maryland resident Matt Albers reached out to Wasno in an effort to bring Rink2Reef to the Chesapeake Bay. With Wasno's support, Albers and members of the community began collecting discarded hockey sticks to construct oyster reefs in 2019. A type of shellfish, oysters typically inhabit both saltwater and brackish estuaries and bays, serving as filter feeders. Simply put, oysters strain the water around them finding plankton and other particles of food while also removing pollutants from the water.