A former Capitals defenseman will receive worker's compensation and disability payments more than nine years after his career was ended by a devastating blow to the head.

For almost a decade, Jamie Huscroft and the Capitals have faced off over the claim in D.C. courts and worker's compensation administration. The kink in his claim was that Huscroft's career ending injury happened in a game in Canada while he was playing for a Capitals' minor league team, the Portland (Maine) Pirates.

Huscroft already was nearing the end of his professional career as a bruising defenseman when he signed a two-year contract with the Capitals in 1999. Before that he spent a decade as a journeyman, playing for the Calgary Flames, Tampa Bay Lightning, Vancouver Canucks and the Phoenix Coyotes. During that time, he accumulated 3,000 penalty minutes with more than 1,000 in the NHL.

While with the Capitals, he appeared in seven NHL games and was with the team during the 2000 NHL playoffs.

His career ended when he was knocked out during a Pirates game in Quebec on Oct. 13, 2000. He later filed a worker's compensation claim seeking temporary disability benefits from May 1, 2001, to July 31, 2001, and temporary partial disability benefits from Aug. 1 2001, to present.

The District's Department of Employment Services granted Huscroft the coverage, but the Capitals contested it on the premise that D.C. law requires the injury to have taken place within city limits.

The D.C. Court of Appeals ruled that even though the injury took place outside of the city, the worker's compensation claim should be upheld because his employment was "localized principally in the District of Columbia." The Capitals paid Huscroft and his primary job was to help strengthen the team, whether or not he was directly playing for it.

Court documents did not contain the amount Huscroft will be paid under the ruling. Calls to Huscroft at his home outside Seattle on Friday were not immediately returned. Neither were calls to the Capitals' attorney in the case.