I’m not armed with data that allow for a comparison of Washington sports teams though the decades who’ve performed miraculous rises from last-place ashes to first-place perches, as this hockey club has in the past 11 weeks. I’m not sure I need it, though. What the Caps have accomplished just since November 23 is nothing short of miraculous and may qualify as ranking with the most impressive — and most unlikely — resurrections in Washington pro sports history.
At Thanksgiving, the Caps were 30th in the league. This morning, they’re third in the East. That isn’t quite leap-frogging over 25 teams. It just feels like it.
It feels like it because of the manner in which this team’s surge has shaken the league’s standings. They’re the Comeback Kids. Ten times they’ve trailed in games and come back to win. Ten times, with nine of them in just Bruce Boudreau’s first 33 games as head coach. They’re also Giant Killers: the swept Senators want no part of the Caps in the postseason — nor might anyone else in the East, of any playoff seed, for that matter. They’re dedicated puck-pressurers and goals-in-bunches lamp lighters. They have star power and heart-and-soul short-shifters who think nothing of throwing their bodies in harm’s way, every shift.
Heck, they even win shootouts now!
What’s perhaps most exciting and rewarding about this run is that it’s been accomplished without any significant personnel manuevering from management. Brian Sutherby was traded in late November, right before Glen Hanlon’s dismissal. Bruce Boudreau was promoted. That’s it as far as notable changes go. No blockbuster deal sweeping out sectors of the early season’s sourness. Just a new maestro and a new MoJo. What we’ve witnessed since Thanksgiving has been a highly organic maturation of, and determination within, a roster that management has carefully assembled over some years. And it’s highly likely that the overall product is going to improve further.
This hockey team is remarkably resilient, too. They’ll will lose one game and get right back to winning the next. Then they’ll bundle a couple of Ws together. That’s how they’ve passed four teams in the Southeast with stunning swiftness. Imagine what they might do this spring with a healthy Chris Clark and Brian Pothier in the lineup.
Maybe this is more impressive: think about the number of instances in which the Caps have been genuinely outplayed by an opponent since Boudreau took over. There was Montreal on the road immediately after the All Star break. And when else? Thirty three games and one thorough stinker among them.
This ain’t bad, either: the Caps are now finished for the season against perhaps the East’s three best teams, Philly, Ottawa, and Montreal. Their record in those 12 games? 8-4.
There was a brief moment Tuesday night in Columbus — now known as McCreary’s Mischief — when the battle-scarred Caps’ chronicler in me reverted to a pessimistic fatalism of previous seasons. It was that sort of bizarre event that seemed so . . . Capitals-esque. But my composure returned, I kept watching, and rather rationally I think I adopted a muted expectation that all was not lost, that this Capitals’ team was different. And so why wouldn’t Tom Poti pick that moment to score his first goal of the season, and of course you know who not long afterward send the home crowd out into the Ohio night dejected from sudden death defeat.
It’s interesting to note that in 1983-84, a 101-pt. Capitals’ club — the very first 100-pt. Caps’ club — had three of its members earn heavy hardware. Bryan Murray won the Jack Adams, Rod Langway garnered his first Norris Trophy, and Doug Jarvis won the Selke. That’s the only time the Caps have won three of the league’s prestigious awards from the same season. That was a summer of awards that portended a period of distinct prosperity — the club’s first. This Capitals’ club won’t earn 100 points this season, although it might arrive at 95. Who might you think are frontrunners for the Hart, Adams, and Calder trophies at this moment?
Per the Washington Capitals press release:
What did the Washington Capitals accomplish with their preseason this September? A good bit, I think. First and foremost, they accomplished the most important task: they avoided serious injury — we’ve no indication that Alexander Semin’s ankle sprain is serious. The second most significant accomplishment, in my opinion, was seeing a healthy number of fresh faces perform at a high level and well integrate with the returning Caps’ core. Tomas Fleischmann, it appears, has won first line right wing duty. He’ll be centered, at least initially, by Viktor Kozlov. So two-thirds of Washington’s top line is new this season. It looks more playoff worthy than either of its previous incarnations the past two seasons.
The swollen and bruised Russians are dressed and practicing this morning. None were making the trip to Carolina today anyway. Their commarade Ovechkin is anything but beat up; he was in his usual Acela Express super stride, and he made a point of turning this morning’s 9:30 practice partly into his own personal competition with Olie Kolzig, dancing hip jigs at scores and uttering rink-wide-audible, English-blended-with-Russian oaths at his failures, during every drill. (For his part Kolzig didn’t man his crease quietly during the challenge.)
You try and remind yourself that barely a long weekend’s worth of camp has been completed, but with it so compressed now, actually, by day’s end, camp will be about one-fifth completed. The Caps have already made cuts.
As Training Camp slowly (so slowly) approaches, we decided to take a quick look at some of the new faces, returnees, hopefuls and last-chancers that will be vying for a spot in the Caps’ forward corps. Battles at many slots are expected, and this may be one of the most competitive camp in Caps’ history.
