Eulogy: Remembering the 2014-15 Washington Capitals

(Ed. Note: As the Stanley Cup Playoffs continue, we're bound to lose some friends along the journey. We've asked for these losers, gone but not forgotten, to be eulogized by the people who knew the teams best: The bloggers and fans who hated them the most. Here is Jason Rogers of Puck Buddies, a Capitals fan, fondly remembering the Washington Capitals Again, this was not written by us. Also: This is a roast and you will be offended by it, so don't take it so seriously.)

By Jason Rogers

I have this recurring nightmare.

In it, Dan Marino and Charles Barkley are sitting at a bar waiting for Alex Ovechkin. I know they must be, because Charles is practicing saying “howitzer” and Marino is nervously touching his perfect teeth.

Sure enough, in walks Ovechkin, and they greet him like an old friend.

“Ring-ring?” Marino asks, holding up a pantomimed phone to his ear.

On cue, Ovechkin holds up his own hand, then turns it outward, revealing his fingers to be bare.

“Nope!” he giggles eagerly.

“We neither!” Chuck bellows.

Right before I wake up, I see Raymond Bourque slip out the door just in time.

**** 

What to make of the Washington Capitals and their exuberant captain?

In a world where sports, one of the last true meritocracies, is increasingly dominated by masters of attrition, these Mayweather mavens of manufacturing victories according to the letter of the law, Ovechkin is a big fat fart ripped in church.

He plays hockey like a Mastiff puppy chasing a flashlight. All big hits, big shots and big dekes, Ovechkin is the highest risk player since Cheech and Chong had board game night. His feast-or-famine style of play is the kind of thing that pee-wee coaches run wind sprints trying to beat out of their kids, and the very same style that those kids go home and buy posters and drool over YouTube videos of. He is your EA Sports “NHL 15” custom-made character with all of the attributes turned up to 99, save for speech.

But beyond the Objective Universal Good that he is for the sport, Ovechkin’s style of play is exactly what the Capitals needed more of in Game 7. As Washington struggled to break out of their own zone, they accepted looser and looser definitions of “getting pucks deep,” playing more dump and chase than a wedding ring dropped down a garbage disposal. Ovechkin, often by himself, instead roared across the blue at full-speed, pulling the puck and the offense and the entire city of Washington along with him.

But it wasn’t enough. It never is. So Ovechkin will be back next year, saying all the right things about how this team is ready to win. And reports will come out of training camp about how he’s really taking coaching instructions from Trotz well. After all, like a good BDSM gimp, he’ll do whatever you ask of him – even change positions. And all the signs will point to this team being different, before the puck is even dropped.

And Hockey won’t care one bit. So he, and every other player in the league, will throw their bodies and minds and souls into the blender once more, just for the chance to even get close enough to winning that schmucks like me have to write eulogies about them.

****

The Capitals will look different next year. Mike Green will likely be gone. Green was a fixture in DC, quarterbacking the power play from the blue line with all the stability and steadfastness of a ligament in RG3’s knee. For years he ran a secret nonprofit to Reintroduce Captive Pucks to the Neutral Zone under the guise of playing point on the special teams unit of a professional hockey team.

He found his defensive game this year though, which is good for a defenseman in his 10th season. He’ll get paid a ton of money this offseason by some team that needs a third line defenseman or a second line forward, and he’ll probably win a Stanley Cup with them the very next year, because of course.

Meanwhile, Washington will be taking a page from SNL’s playbook and leaning heavily on a bunch of young faces whether they’re ready for the big time or not. Swedish breakout Andre Burakovsky and obvious-Trojan-horse-from-Russia Evgeny Kuznetsov dazzled in the playoffs, but both were healthy scratches at different points of the season. Young players tend to trend upward with experience, but not always, and the road to NHL superstardom is littered with “Mikhail Tolstovs” and “Joe MacCrohns” (I just made those up, they sound like journeyman names).

I’d say the Capitals are closer to winning a Stanley Cup than they’ve ever been, but people stepping on land mines are close to those, too.

****

And with that, we turn to the segment that UNESCO designated a World Heritage Site and the USDA declared unfit for human consumption:

LIABLE TO LIBEL: A BAKER’S DOZEN LIES ABOUT THE WASHINGTON CAPITALS

1. Before every game, the Capitals’ staff presents Braden Holtby with two offerings, one of grain and one of flesh. His choice determines the pregame music.

2. Barry Trotz is actually one of the transitional middle images from an Animorphs book about an American Staffordshire Terrier.

3. Nicklas Backstrom absolutely does not have an evil subterranean volcano lair, and is afraid he must insist that you stop asking about it.

4. Much like the beta fish, Tom Wilson will attempt to punch his reflection if you place a mirror in his enclosure.

5. Mike Milbury’s last words will be a whispered “Ovechkin,” the name of his boyhood sled.

6. Troy Brouwer and Brooks Orpik will sometimes allow the rest of the team to sit cross-legged around them and pass around their championship rings, but only if the team behaves, and only if it’s not a school night.

7. Jason Chimera, the Flash and Superman once had a race, and the resulting explosion created what is today Nova Scotia.

8. Joel Ward’s car has three pedals, and every one of them is the clutch.

9. The Verizon Center sprinkler system actually sprays down Hill interns’ LinkedIn profiles and unregulated campaign donations.

10. Much like The Picture of Dorian Gray, Bruce Boudreau keeps a 2009 team photo in his office in Anaheim that gets more beautiful with every Caps Game 7 loss.

11. There is indeed a series of secret underground tunnels criss-crossing Washington, DC, but only the president, Ted Leonsis, and John Wall are allowed to use them.

12. When Alex Ovechkin first arrived in America, he was presented with gifts of Kolzig, Bondra, and myrrh.

13. After Game 7, Henrik Lundqvist and Brooks Laich had a Handsome-Off in the bowels of Madison Square Garden, but the footage will never see the light of day, because the cameras broke.

****

So there you have it. I come not to praise the Capitals’ 2014-2015 season, but to bury it, most likely in a pile of cigarettes, empty liquor bottles, and an e-mail confirmation of my purchase of early preseason tickets for next year.

Go Caps.

My name is Jason Rogers, and my Twitter handle is @HeyJayJRogers. I write for PuckBuddys.com in Washington, DC.