Earlier this season, when the Hershey Bears bused south for a game against the Norfolk Admirals, forward Caleb Herbert stopped at a museum while walking to practice. Inside, he noticed a picture of an old ship, sails climbing up the masts and flapping in the captured breeze, steering through choppy waters below. The image stuck with Herbert, a fifth-round draftee of the Washington Capitals five years ago, and when he returned home to the Twin Cities, he asked a tattoo artist to etch the boat onto his left arm.  “It sort of represents my life’s journey,” he said Friday afternoon, the penultimate day of his sixth development camp with Washington, making him the longest-tenured participant here. “It’s personal to me, so I can remind myself every day just to keep pushing through hard times, rough seas, things like that. Always keep sailing, keep moving forward.”  That Herbert found the ship during an American Hockey League road trip was significant by itself, since the 23-year-old spent only 12 games with the Bears last season, his first full year in the professional ranks after signing a two-year, entry-level contract. Instead, he logged 42 games and 28 points for the South Carolina Stingrays of the ECHL, then 27 more in the playoffs during their run into the Kelly Cup finals, at once a significant achievement and a reminder of how much further Herbert hoped to climb.  He will become a restricted free agent after this season and, much like every other minor leaguer fighting to belong, the prospect of competing for a new deal is carried with him. A right wing by trade, skating on a line with Travis Boyd and Liam O’Brien this week, Herbert should challenge for a roster spot with Hershey, ideally parlaying his brief stint in 2014-15 into a full-time gig.  “I’m obviously aware of that,” Herbert said. “Everyone wants to play hockey as long as they can, so coming into this year, there’s maybe a little more importance on that. Maybe they’re expecting a little more out of me. I’m having a meeting with [Coach] Barry [Trotz] later on this afternoon. I’m curious to hear what he has to say. I just want to make the most of it. I’ll obviously continue to work hard. I’m aware it’s my last year in the contract, so want to make the most of it, that’s for sure.”  The long postseason with South Carolina, when he recorded 11 assists and three goals, cut into Herbert’s ideal summer workout schedule, when he would ordinarily have returned home and trained for the off-ice testing conducted at development camp, and so he arrived in Arlington exhausted for the grinding two-a-days held Tuesday and Thursday.  “By the end of it, my body was beat up, so I had to take some time there and recover,” he said.  But Herbert also understood that this week’s events, as nerve-wracking as it can be skating while front office officials peer from above, paled in comparison to the pressure of training camp in the fall. Last year, Herbert felt star-struck sharing rinks with household names like Alex Ovechkin and Nicklas Backstrom, and accordingly “you start thinking a lot and you get inside your own head.”  He felt more confident this week, a veteran with greater expectations for himself and even the owner of a personalized fan club, complete with a Volkswagen Beetle and a Twitter account, @herbertislife.  “I guess the closest thing to that was probably my buddies in high school hockey, painting my number on their chest,” he said, shirtless inside the Capitals’ locker room Friday afternoon, the ship on his left bicep and, on the left, a phrase often uttered by his father, a reminder to keep plugging along: “This too shall pass.”  Alex Prewitt covers the Washington Capitals. Follow him on Twitter
A long postseason run in the ECHL left Herbert tired for development camp, but his eyes are set on impressive during the preseason.