“I just leave Greenfly open throughout the entirety of the game.”
That’s what Washington Capitals Social Media Director Anthony Meier had to say about his gameday workflow as he and the rest of Caps’ digital team followed Alex Ovechkin’s final ascent toward hockey immortality.
Ovechkin made his NHL debut on October 5, 2005, the day after the ninth episode of The Office first aired on linear television…and five years and one day before the launch of Instagram. He got right to work, netting two goals against the Columbus Blue Jackets that night.
Twenty years and 895 regular season goals later, he’s officially hockey’s all-time leading scorer, having passed Wayne Gretzky with a power play goal in the second period of a 4-1 loss to the New York Islanders on April 6, 2025.
Ovi and the Caps have both exceeded expectations throughout the 2024-25 season, with the former posting his 14th career 40-goal campaign and the latter clinching a postseason spot early and leading the way in the Eastern Conference.
And so it’s no surprise that the world was paying greater attention to what was dubbed THE GR8 CHASE.
Meier and the Capitals social media team — as well as the NHL and the national media — ramped up their coverage with every major step of Ovi’s journey. Each goal in the final stretch spawned a handful of inline posts on Instagram, a solid mixture of in-game broadcast highlights, stylized graphics, video compilations and live photos and videos from the moments themselves.
On a typical gameday, the process starts early, with Meier and his team reaching out to the Live Social Contributors working the game that day. Colloquially known as LSCs in the NHL, these are professional content creators staffed by the league and assigned to arenas around North America. There’s at least one at every NHL game, with increased coverage for major events…like every time Alex Ovechkin laces up his skates.
Road teams are often heavily reliant on content from LSCs who upload directly into Greenfly in real-time. Meier typically makes contact early to share a shot sheet, discuss coverage ideas, and go over what will happen if (when) Ovi scores.
“I just leave Greenfly open throughout the entirety of the game.”
Washington Capitals Social Media Director Anthony Meier
Meier hovers in his Greenfly All Assets folder in wake of a major milestone and looks out for the notification alerting him that new photos and videos have been added in real-time.
When Ovechkin scored his 891st career goal in Boston on April 1, the Capitals social media team relied on specific shots captured by LSC Michael Mooney at the TD Garden. Those exclusive assets were uploaded into the Greenfly platform in the moments following the goal, and the Caps team had downloaded the first less than a minute later.
We pulled the [Greenfly] photo, plugged it in, and then we’re getting that out on Instagram five or ten minutes after it happens.
Anthony Meier
Content directors and social media managers across the industry innately understand that there’s a strong, positive correlation between speed to publish after a major moment and engagement generated by the content published, but there are qualitative factors at play as well. Meier indicated his preference for using LSC content in many moments like this specifically to differentiate from what other accounts and external sources might have access to.
In real-time, the images were leveraged in an Instagram carousel post led by a graphic sponsored by Venture Global that generated more than 27,000 likes, ultimately driving engagement and revenue back to the club.
It was one of five Instagram posts published in the aftermath of No. 891 that generated a combined 175,000 engagements…from one goal on one channel.
When Ovi notched career goal No. 893 at home in Washington against the Blackhawks on Friday April 4, LSCs around the arena uploaded content within minutes. Meier’s team snagged a number of them, including a high-angle video of the goal itself and an image of the team’s mascot unveiling banners reading 8-9-3, which was punched up with an overlay of a Tweet from the club’s PR staff.
Shoot. Upload. Download. Edit. Assemble. Author copy. Publish.
The whole process took 15 minutes, soup to nuts.
Goal No. 893 also happened to come on the night 20-year-old forward Ryan Leonard, a 2023 first-round pick, notched his first career goal in just his third career game. Leonard then got to pose with Ovechkin and Gretzky in the locker room immediately after. Those assets pulled into Greenfly via an integration with Getty Images were routed for Leonard to access and download.
The Caps took a layered approach to how they were leveraging the Greenfly platform. They used Greenfly’s +Engage feature to collect more than 100 unique pieces of UGC to commemorate the time Ovechkin swam in the Georgetown fountain after the Stanley Cup championship parade.
So — when the moment finally arrived on Sunday on Long Island — Meier and his team were ready.
Ovechkin notched the record-breaking goal at 1:47 PM ET and assets were in Greenfly ready to be used at 1:52 PM. The first download came at 1:58 while the parties involved were still setting up for what turned out to be a lengthy stoppage in play and an emotional tribute. By the time play resumed at 2:11 PM, Meier and Co. had downloaded a number of assets and published more than a dozen posts across various social media platforms.
They also used content generated by LSCs and uploaded into Greenfly in the photo collage graphic they prepared in advance to mark the record-breaking goal itself.
All told, Meier and the Caps are an excellent example of how to leverage Greenfly to maximize the value of short-form content. They’re grabbing live photos and videos from LSCs around the league covering the biggest moments happening in real-time, they’re leveraging those assets right away in organic and sponsored content, they’re pulling in additional assets via integrations, routing everything to the players and calling back it for use in recaps and highlights…and they’re inviting their massive, hyper-engaged fanbase to contribute to the storytelling effort.
