Capitals eager to end their title drought in Vegas desert
June 6, 2018
LAS VEGAS (AP) The Washington Capitals will play for a Stanley Cup championship Thursday night for the first time in franchise history.
Although Alex Ovechkin understands the magnitude of this situation, he wants his teammates focused on the Golden Knights, not the silver trophy.
A desert is a strange place to end a drought, but Ovechkin and his teammates want to seize their very first chance to quench their fans' 43 seasons of frustration when they take the Las Vegas ice for Game 5.
Even with a commanding 3-1 series lead in the Stanley Cup Final, the Caps all spoke of the importance of consistency and seizing the moment after their light workout Wednesday. Washington has scored 16 goals in four games against the reeling Golden Knights
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Capitals eager to end their title drought
June 6, 2018
LAS VEGAS (AP) The Washington Capitals will play for a Stanley Cup championship Thursday night for the first time in 43 NHL seasons. Alex Ovechkin is one win away from carving his name into history at the peak of his incredible hockey career.
With a 3-1 lead in the Stanley Cup Final and a city thousands of miles away thirsting for its first championship in a generation, the Vegas stakes are awfully high for the Caps in Game 5.
Ovi still wants his teammates thinking about the Golden Knights, not that silver trophy.
''To be honest, I think most of us have never been in this position,'' said Ovechkin, who could become the first Russian captain to raise the Cup. ''For me personally, I don't try to think about it too much what's going on and just try focusing on different things. But it's hard.''
Exactly what could distract an athlete of Ovechkin's magnitude from the imminent chance to validate his place in his sport?
''Whatever. Cars. Hotels. You know, Vegas.''
Indeed, this desert is a strange place to end a drought. But with three chances to get one win, Ovechkin and his teammates want to seize their very first opportunity for the clincher on the Las Vegas ice.
With one more victory, Ovechkin would finally have team success to complement his formidable individual accomplishments. The vaunted goal-scorer can also succeed where a generation of Washington athletes have fallen short by leading the Capitals to their first title and the city's first major pro sports championship in a quarter-century.
With his 33rd birthday looming in the fall, Ovechkin understands the opportunity before him and the magnitude of the situation for everyone who has ever worn the Capitals' jersey.
It's enough to tighten anybody's grip on the stick, but the Caps didn't appear overly tight during their workout or in the dressing room afterward.
''It's a great time,'' Ovechkin said Wednesday. ''Probably the best time in my life, hockey-wise. We just enjoy it together, this moment. It's fun.''
Even with a commanding series lead, the Caps all spoke of the importance of consistency and seizing the moment after their light workout. Washington has a shockingly lengthy franchise history of playoff collapses, but these Caps promptly won all three potential closeout games in their first three playoff series this spring.
''Maybe because we've talked about it so much,'' Caps defenseman John Carlson said. ''Guys are sick of hearing about it from the meetings. Sick of not getting it done. They all kind of blend together, but I think we have come out with great efforts every closing-out game, and we're going to need a big one. This is a good team at home. It's going to take a really good effort to get it done.''
The Caps don't have the luxury of thinking about the minor disappointment of not being at home to secure Washington's first championship in a major pro sport since the Redskins' Super Bowl victory in January 1992. Back home in D.C., fans will be cheering on their team at Capital One Arena in a watch party that sold out in about 20 minutes.
''I think the history of the organization is definitely an important thing, but we're focused on this group,'' Washington's Tom Wilson said. ''We're focused on this year, and obviously once all is said and done or whatever happens, you can look back on it. We want to do it for the city. We want to do it for ourselves.''
So far in this series, the Caps have done just about everything well. Washington has scored 16 goals in four games against the reeling Golden Knights, whose charmed expansion season has run short of magic in three consecutive losses.
While the Caps focused on changing nothing from their last three efforts, the Golden Knights also don't believe they need a wholesale change. Coach Gerard Gallant's team is banking on the resilience of a group that hasn't lost four consecutive games at any point in their utterly charmed inaugural season.
''It's not the first adversity we've faced this year,'' forward Jonathan Marchessault said. ''You'd rather have the odds in your favor, but I'm thinking about (Game 5). If you start thinking that we have to win three games, sometimes it gets demoralizing. We're just focused on the next one. ... They're in a better situation than us, that's for sure. Stuff we've done this year has never been done, so I think that's what we're thinking about.''
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Smith-Pelly to skip WH visit if Caps win
June 6, 2018
LAS VEGAS (AP) Count out Devante Smith-Pelly if the Washington Capitals win the Stanley Cup and are invited to the White House to celebrate with President Donald Trump.
''The things that he spews are straight-up racist and sexist,'' Canada's Postmedia quoted Smith-Pelly as saying Wednesday as the Capitals prepared for Game 5 against the Vegas Golden Knights. ''Some of the things he's said are pretty gross. I'm not too into politics, so I don't know all his other views, but his rhetoric I definitely don't agree with. It hasn't come up here, but I think I already have my mind made up.''
Smith-Pelly, one of two black Capitals players, is from the Toronto area. He spoke two days after Trump canceled the Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles' visit to the White House, and a day after NBA stars LeBron James and Curry both said they wouldn't visit.
The Capitals lead the best-of-seven series 3-1, and can hoist the Cup on Thursday night.
The 25-year-old Smith-Pelly has scored in the last two games of the finals and had six goals - two of them winners - and an assist in the playoffs. He had seven goals in 75 games in the regular season.
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Run could make up for Caps' failures
June 7, 2018
WASHINGTON (AP) As checkered playoff histories go, the Washington Capitals haven't been around nearly as long as some NHL teams.
The track is still long and sad.
There was Pat Lafontaine of the Islanders beating them in the four-overtime ''Easter Epic'' back in 1987. Esa Tikkanen missing a wide-open net in the Stanley Cup Final loss to Detroit in 1998.
Heck, losing nine of 11 postseason meetings against the Pittsburgh Penguins alone is filled to the brim with gut-wrenching letdowns.
The puck finally seems to be bouncing the right way for the Capitals, who built a 3-1 lead in the Final against Vegas after some rare postseason fortune. Lars Eller's double-overtime winner off his right skate kept his team out of a 3-0 hole in the first round. Then came a cathartic, six-game elimination of the Penguins behind a patchwork lineup full of rookies.
Against the Golden Knights, Braden Holtby made the stick save of a lifetime to lock up a Game 2 win and opponent James Neal clanked a shot off the post in Game 4, staring at as much net as Tikkanen had 20 years ago.
It's as though all the bad breaks from the previous 42 seasons of Washington Capitals hockey are being erased - or at least somewhat forgotten - in a run that could deliver the franchise's first title.
''It's like the franchise was star-struck,'' said David Poile, who was Washington's general manager from 1982-1995.
''They've had all these really good teams, all of these opportunities that appeared that this could be the year that they could win playoff rounds and compete for the Cup or win the Stanley Cup. ... It just feels like - as Barry Trotz would say - the hockey gods have evened things out.''
Before this spring, the Capitals had made it past the second round of the playoffs just twice and reached the final once, when Tikkanen and Co. were swept by the Red Wings. Abe and Irene Pollin, the longtime owners of the Capitals and NBA's Bullets/Wizards, had to learn how to handle losing.
''My husband and I had developed a habit of when we lost, we would go to eat frozen custard to help us deal with the loss,'' Irene Pollin recalled.
There were a lot of chances for custard: Teams leading 3-1 in a best-of-seven series have won 91 percent of the time (276-28). Of those 28, the Capitals have blown such a lead five times - the most of any team.
Winning just one game against the expansion Golden Knights already made this the most successful season in the history of a franchise that began in 1974-75. It was, by the way, the worst first-year team in NHL history (8-67-5) that developed into a team known for postseason failures - which only worsened in the Alex Ovechkin era.
For many of the players who have been through it all, the strong showing against Vegas is long overdue.
''I'm part of history. I'm part of not winning a Cup here for a long time,'' said longtime scoring winger Peter Bondra, who played for the Capitals from 1990-2004.
''I don't even play, but I feel like a part of this team, believe it or not. It's just something in it. Obviously, I play here for 14 years, I grew up here with the team as a player, my family grew up here. Seeing this would be amazing if it happens.''
It's almost amazing this team even exists. After missing the playoffs in their first eight seasons, there was a ''Save the Caps'' campaign in 1982 just to keep them around and in Washington.
''We couldn't sell tickets,'' said Irene Pollin, now 93. ''We went to Montreal to fight for the franchise, So for three days and three nights we were up and I was in a nightgown typing letters to the president and everybody to have them send letters to the league because they kept saying, `Washington is a southern city, it'll never be a hockey town.'''
Abe Pollin that summer hired Poile as his general manager. When the 33-year-old executive asked for a three-year contract, Pollin agreed but only after telling Poile he'd better do well in the first season or the franchise might fold.
Less than two weeks later, Poile changed the course of the franchise by acquiring eventual Hall of Fame defenseman Rod Langway. Washington made the playoffs in all 13 seasons with Poile in charge but couldn't break through.
''We had to play against some of the great teams ever in the NHL: We had to go against the Islanders who won four straight, the Rangers were always on the border, Pittsburgh when Mario (Lemieux) came in,'' said Langway, who played 11 seasons for the Capitals. ''We challenged them, we competed with them, but we couldn't get over the hump.''
That became the Capitals' unwelcome hallmark. Plenty of times an improbable play ended a promising run, whether it was the Rangers' Pierre Larouche beating Pete Peeters from a sharp angle in 1986 or Lafontaine's shot through traffic for the Game 7 winner a year later early on Easter morning at the Capital Centre in nearby Landover, Maryland.
''To me, that is sort of what happened, the epitome of what has happened to this franchise,'' said winger-turned-broadcaster Craig Laughlin, who came to Washington in the Langway trade and never left. ''We didn't get those type of bounces. It seemed like every other team did but we didn't.''
That continued to Tikkanen in 1998 and into the ''Rock the Red'' era with Ovechkin and Nicklas Backstrom. They lost in overtime of Game 7 in 2008 on a Flyers power play, in 2009 on home ice when the Penguins blew them out, in 2010 when Canadiens goaltender Jaroslav Halak stopped 41 of 42 shots in Game 7, in 2012 when a high-sticking double-minor penalty put them down 3-2 to the Rangers, and in 2017 when they had no response in a explicable Game 7 loss to - of course - the Penguins.
''That's one of the things that you'll look back on, that I'll look back on, is which years I think that we had a legitimate chance and it just didn't go our way and the years that we just didn't deserve it,'' said defenseman Karl Alzner, who was a first-round pick of the Capitals, became a core player for six first- or second-round exits and left in free agency last offseason. ''We had bad matchups and injuries at bad times.''
Just like in 2010, when Washington looked unstoppable, the 2016 and 2017 teams won the Presidents' Trophy as the best team in the regular season. But this year was supposed to be a step-back season and the third consecutive division title was a bit of a surprise. The Capitals fell behind Columbus 2-0 in the first round, but them something seemed different when the puck pinballed off a defender and Eller and in to win Game 3.
''Usually that Eller goal would've been the opposition scoring on us and it would've been devastating and they'd be up 3-0 and we'd lose the series,'' said Laughlin, now a TV color commentator who along with team President Dick Patrick is among the longest-lasting members of the organization. ''That started the kind of change around and turnaround, exactly that goal, because that just doesn't happen with the Capitals in the playoffs.''
Many expected the NHL's biggest surprise this season, Vegas, to continue its amazing run in its first year. Instead, the seemingly charmed Golden Knights have struggled against the rugged Capitals.
Langway is already beaming with pride and said he has felt the same from fellow alumni. Alzner is happy for friends, but there is a tinge of sadness, too.
''I've seen how it's all kind of gone down and tweaking with the team and trying to figure out the right mix,'' Alzner said. ''You helped build the foundation a bit, but without actually getting your name on the Cup and the ring and stuff, it's a bit empty.''
Long-suffering Capitals fans have celebrated on the steps of the National Portrait Gallery and filled the rink for viewing parties of road playoff games. Knowing what they have been through and wanting the best for coach Barry Trotz and others, Poile hopes Washington can finish at the top - the standard he set as the target more than 35 years ago.
''Finally. With us being part of the Caps for 15 years, I'm really happy for them,'' Poile said. ''End of the story is they get the greatest chance ever right now being one game away from winning the Cup.''
