The Capitals' season is over. The finish of the championship can be devoted exclusively to the goals of Alexander Ovechkin.
Today, the Washington Capitals hockey players had another training session before flying to Montreal for a game with the local Canadiens. Before the practice, the players, the coaching staff and the club staff held a traditional ceremony of creating a common team photo. And it was probably hard enough for the Capitals to force themselves to smile sincerely for the camera, because the Capitals have no reason to be happy.
The general emotional background of the team of Peter Laviolette was clearly visible during the recent match, “Washington” against the “New York Rangers”. The Caps lost that meeting hopelessly, and due to the realization of their weakness and lack of resources to correct the situation, even the experienced leaders of the team could not stand the nerves. Alexander Ovechkin also gave free rein to emotions.
“This is definitely not what we want. The place where we are is the result of our work, the work of our own hands. We want and can be better. Naturally, it is psychologically difficult when other teams go to the playoffs, and your team is not. This feeling somehow works against us,» Laviolette said after the match.
There was nothing surprising in this. The Capitals were out of their hands, and the loss to the Rangers left Washington out of any playoff game. This time everything depended on the rivals of the “capital”. Those pretty quickly allowed the fans of the Capitals to exhale and stop counting on anything.
If the Pittsburgh Penguins were smeared in Newark by the local New Jersey Devils, then the Florida Panthers in a parallel meeting with the “Buffalo Sabers” managed to win the most important victory for himself.
The Panthers returned to the top 8 of the Eastern Conference and knocked out the Penguins — their direct competitors. And at the same time they deprived Washington of the last mathematical chances of getting into the playoffs. Four games before the end of the regular season, “Florida” has 87 points to its credit. The same number of “New York Islanders” for the same four games before the finish line. “Washington”, with its 77th points in the piggy bank, has five games left in which the “Caps” will score a maximum of just 10 points. But according to additional indicators, Ovechkin and Co. will not get ahead of Florida with the Islanders in any way and will be left out of the playoffs.
Such a failure in the “Washington” was not almost ten years. The last time the Capitals were out of the Stanley Cup was in the 2013-14 season. Then the Capitals scored 90 points in 82 games and lost their place in the top eight teams of the Eastern Conference to Detroit (93). The only bright spot in the regular season for Caps fans was… Alexander Ovechkin. Who else? The Russian then for the fifth time in his career in the NHL struck fifty goals (51) and became the best sniper of the championship, and in total scored 79 points (51 + 28) and finished first in the list of scorers among all Russians of the championship.
Coincidence or not, but this season Ovechkin is perhaps the only positive result for the club. The Russian sniper in the course of the «regular season» rewrote a number of really great and grandiose records. Right now, Ovie is the second-best shooter in league history. Gordie Howe has long been behind, only Wayne Gretzky is ahead, to whom Alexander has just over seven dozen goals to score.
But the most important thing in the current situation is that such a situation was predicted, therefore the failure of “Washington” cannot be called sensational. Everything fell out of the hands of the “capital” not in one game with the “Rangers”, not in one last game month, and not even in one current season. The club's current problems are the result of its entire system over the past few years.
Literally from the next season after the epochal victory of the Stanley Cup in 2018, the Caps began to sink to the bottom, regularly raising the issue of the need for restructuring. Her makings were visible in the past trade deadline, when the club parted ways with Dmitry Orlov, Erik Gustafsson, Garnet Hathaway, Lars Eller and Markus Johansson. All contracts expired at the end of the season, the extension of which seemed to “Washington” and impossible, and futile in terms of building a new team. It will take another 2-3 years, and from the former “Capitals” there will be nothing at all. Even Alexander Ovechkin, who is likely to retire at the end of the 2025/26 season.
A paradox or not, but for Washington (as well as for any other franchise that could be in the place of the Capitals) the last years of Ovechkin's adventures in the NHL are much more important than the urgent creation of a new team and the momentary struggle for the Stanley Cup. The title of champions is played every year, and even a pandemic is not a hindrance to this. But the title of the best sniper in the history of the league — no more than once every quarter of a century. The record of Wayne Gretzky, which in 1.5-2 years should be renamed the record of Alexander Ovechkin, is more important. Few people can be surprised by the number of trophies won. And to become the club whose player becomes the best in history is much more valuable.
And now that the task of making it to the playoffs has completely lost its relevance, Ovi's teammates can safely focus on supplying their captain with ammunition, helping him to close the gap with the Greatest and not worry about anything.