NHL Playoffs

They’ve never won the Stanley Cup. They may never win the Stanley Cup. You cannot win the Stanley Cup if you cannot get past the second round of the NHL playoffs.

The Washington Capitals are much like their namesake city – they promise much, they deliver little and the guy in the middle of it all is a Russian.

The Capitals exited the NHL playoffs again, at the hands of the Pittsburgh Penguins again, in a Game 7 again. The Penguins beat the Capitals 2-0 on Thursday night and will move on to play the Ottawa Senators for the right to defend the Stanley Cup they won last year (in part by eliminating the Capitals).

Best team in the regular season? The Caps. Best team in the playoffs? Not the Caps. They failed to score at home against the Penguins. They’re 3-7 in seventh games during the Alex Ovechkin Era (or Error). They’re 0-4 in Game 7s against the Penguins.

“It’s just extreme disappointment,” Caps defenseman Karl Alzner said. “There are times when you know you’re not the best team in the playoffs. But we honestly thought we were the best team in the playoffs and showed flashes of it. But when you don’t even get past the second round, it’s extreme disappointment.”

It was the second year in a row that Ovechkin and the boys won the Presidents’ Trophy for the NHL’s best regular-season record but wilted in the second round of the playoffs. They’ve played for the Stanley Cup only once in their history and haven’t been past the second round of the playoffs since 1998. If you’re 18, you missed it!

To add water to the fans’ fire, the Washington Wizards absorbed a 123-101 defeat in the NBA playoffs at the hands of the Boston Celtics at the same time the Caps were losing, to fall behind 3-2 in their best-of-seven series.

Once upon a time, when the Washington Senators were one of the worst baseball teams imaginable, some wit coined this phrase: “Washington – first in war, first in peace, last in the American League.”

The more things change…
 
 
Post By: Larry Weisman, a longtime sportswriter for USA TODAY, blogs for Twistity.com. Follow him on Twitter @MrLarryWeisman