Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

I Watched This Game: The Washington Capitals are Stanley Cup Champions

Alex Ovechkin wins the Conn Smythe as Stanley Cup Playoffs MVP.
I Watched This Game - IWTG Banner

It’s been a long-time coming for Alex Ovechkin and even longer for the Washington Capitals.

The Capitals entered the NHL just four years after the Canucks and took a lot longer to see any sort of success. They missed the playoffs for their first eight seasons and didn’t make the Stanley Cup Finals for the first time until 1998, where they lost to the Detroit Red Wings in a four-game sweep.

Before this season, that was the only time the Capitals had been to the Cup Finals.

For Ovechkin, this was his first time even making it past the second round. Despite being the greatest goalscorer of his generation, and some legitimately fantastic playoff numbers, he kept running into Henrik Lundqvist and the Rangers or Sidney Crosby and the Penguins.

Seven of the nine times Ovechkin has been knocked out of the playoffs, it came in a Game 7.

As my six-year-old is fond of saying about every perceived injustice, like not being allowed ice cream for breakfast, it’s not fair.

So you can understand why Ovechkin and the Capitals were even more emotional than your typical Stanley Cup winners when they came pouring onto the ice after the final horn sounded. That emotion has been pent up for a long time and the only thing that could express that emotion was cathartic screaming.

Watching Ovechkin celebrate, I couldn’t help but think that the emotional release he experienced is similar to what Canucks fans might feel should Vancouver ever bring home the Stanley Cup. As much as I would have welcomed a win for the Vegas Golden Knights, it’s hard to avoid the reality that the Stanley Cup means more to those who have waited for it longer.

Before I watched Ovechkin lift the Stanley Cup, I watched this game.

  • Panic! at the Disco was a mild improvement over Fall Out Boy when it comes to pre-game concerts, though poor sound mixing meant you could barely hear them. The biggest upgrade was the setting, as they set up a stage in the middle of the Bellagio fountain, which provided the equivalent of pyrotechnics to the music. Aquatechnics, I guess?
  • During the pre-game skate, Alex Ovechkin and Marc-Andre Fleury had an altercation as each tried to get in the other’s kitchen and break a few dishes. Ovechkin gave Fleury a fly-by, crossing over the centre line to do so, breaking what is only a partially-written rule to do so. The NHL rulebook says that each team should stay in its own end of the rink, but only provides rules for a punishment if a fight occurs. Fleury briefly skated after Ovechkin, crossing the centre line himself, then gave Ovechkin a hefty chop on the shins the next time he skated by.
  • Apparently one of the Capitals pre-game routines is to hit each other in the groin with a hockey stick. No, seriously. As this tweet suggests, perhaps they’re taking their quest for the Cup a little too far. Wrong cup, guys!

 

 

  • This was a thoroughly enjoyable series, full of fun, fast-paced, physical hockey, and the final game was no exception. The action was back-and-forth, with scoring chances a-plenty for both teams. There were big hits, big goals, and big mistakes. Please let the typical copycatting of the Stanley Cup Finalists occur, as I could go for some more exciting hockey like this throughout the rest of the NHL.
  • Despite the fast-paced, loosely-defended action, neither team could buy a goal in the first period. Ovechkin rang the post on the best chance of the first period, a bullet of a shot that seemed to come from Chekhov’s Gun. You know what they say: “If in the first period a sniper hits the post with a shot that looked labeled for the top corner, in the second or third period, that sniper must score.”
  • I had to laugh when Don Cherry attempted to use the game’s first penalty, interference on Colin Miller, as evidence that the referee furthest from the play shouldn’t make the call. Miller wiped out Michal Kempny, who never came close to touching the puck, along the boards. It was a blatantly obvious penalty, which means it was perfect evidence for the exact opposite of Cherry’s point: sometimes you need the far referee to make the call, as otherwise obvious penalties get missed.
  • I feel like I’ve talked about Don Cherry too much in this series. Maybe it needs its own, separate feature: Cherry Picking, or something like that.
  • The Capitals opened the scoring thanks to some over-aggressive play from the Golden Knights. After a Vegas power play, Deryk Engelland skated in off the blue line aggressively for a shot, but two unfortunate things happened: he missed the net and no one covered for him. His missed shot run around the boards to Evgeny Kuznetsov, who sprung Jakub Vrana on a breakaway behind Engelland. Vrana’s release, unlike that of D’Angelo’s Black Messiah, wasn’t delayed at all: the puck jumped off his stick with little warning, beating Fleury over the glove.
  • The Golden Knights responded by getting the puck luck they were denied in Game 4. After some solid pressure, Nate Schmidt threw the puck towards Jonathan Marchessault in the slot, looking for a tip. He got it, but not the one he was expecting, as the puck deflected in off Matt Niskanen’s skate, back through Braden Holtby’s legs.
  • Brayden McNabb tried to prevent the eventual Ovechkin goal by hauling down the Capitals captain on a potential breakaway, but Ovechkin would not be denied. On the subsequent power play, Nicklas Backstrom patiently waited for the right opening, then threaded the needle like a grandma to Ovechkin for the one-timer. Ovechkin went behind Fleury’s back like a terrible friend.
  • David Perron scored both himself and the puck to tie the game at two. As he battled with Christian “Holy Water” Djoos in front, the Capitals defenceman pushed Perron into the crease and eventually the net. Not only did that prevent Holtby from making a save, the puck looked like it was going wide before it hit Perron’s skate. Like V8, that was bad Djoos.
  • Yes, I said it, V8 is terrible.
  • The goal was reviewed, but the call on the ice was upheld, because Djoos pushed Perron into the crease. It may have looked ludicrous, as Perron definitely knocked Holtby’s leg out from under him, but it was still the right call. It could have been avoided entirely if the referees had just called both of them for coincidental minors, because they were repeatedly cross-checking each other, but calling according to the rulebook so the players on the ice can simply play is just crazy-talk.
  • Missing in all the Perron/Djoos hullabaloo was the great play by Tomas Tatar, who savvily got open off the boards and beaver-tailed frantically for the slap-pass. Miller obliged, and Tatar deflected the puck towards the net where Perron accidentally tipped it in. It’s baffling to me that Tatar and Perron were ever healthy scratches during this series.
  • Ovechkin drew a penalty and scored on the power play, so it was only fair that he even things up and take a penalty of his own. It was a necessary one, tripping William Karlsson as he stepped into the left faceoff circle for a wide open shot. After all, the only players that scored more goals than Karlsson this year were Patrik Laine and Ovechkin himself.
  • The Golden Knights took the lead on the power play thanks to a superb pass by Alex Tuch. After he tipped the puck on net and collected the rebound, everybody in the building thought he was going to throw it back at the net. Instead, he hooked the puck back across the slot through John Carlson’s legs to Reilly Smith, who kicked the puck up to his stick and deposited it into the wide open net like a paycheck in a drive-through ATM. So easy. So convenient.
  • The game got chippier than a lumber mill at that point, as Brooks Orpik took a potshot at Karlsson after the goal, giving him a gloved punch to the face. A donnybrook ensued with four players getting off-setting roughing minors out of it.
  • Somehow it seems fitting that the player that cost the Knights the deciding game in the Stanley Cup Final came from the Canucks. With a lead going into the third period, Vegas watched it slip away on two terrible plays by the pizza delivery man himself, Luca Sbisa.
  • That’s not to put all the blame on Sbisa — just most of it. On the 3-3 goal, he flubbed a reverse behind the net under the forechecking pressure of Devante Smith-Pelly, but that’s easily forgivable. Letting Smith-Pelly skate unimpeded to the net to score a goal? Less forgivable. That one will require some penance.
  • With Sbisa seeming to forget that Smith-Pelly exists, the Washington winger could have had an existential crisis. Instead, he made the most of his temporary invisibility, taking a tough pass off his skate, then diving out to swing the puck just inside the post. It was a fantastic way to cap off a surprising playoff run for Smith-Pelly: he had just seven goals all season, but matched it with seven goals in the postseason, including three in the Final.
  • Sbisa struck again on the game-winning, and consequently Cup-winning, goal. After he iced the puck, the Golden Knights were able to clear off the faceoff. But on the dump-in, Sbisa once again flubbed the puck, giving it away to Andre Burakovsky behind the net. Again, forgivable. Failing to box out his man, Lars Eller? Less forgivable. The puck popped out behind Fleury like he laid an egg and Eller was all over it like Ron Swanson.
  • Marc-Andre Fleury wasn’t the sole reason the Golden Knights made the Stanley Cup Final, but he was certainly the main reason. He had arguably the greatest regular season and playoffs of his career. But it’s hard to ignore that he gave up 20 goals in the five games of the Finals for an .853 save percentage. The Golden Knights needed Fleury to steal a game or two and, instead, the Capitals repeatedly took advantage of his aggressive style with backdoor plays and brought Fleury back down to earth like blue ice.
  • In the final two minutes, the clock somehow malfunctioned. The clocked jumped from 1:49 to 15:18, then 14.9 seconds, then down to 12.8 seconds. Meanwhile, the play on the ice continued unabated. At one point it jumped back up to 1:00, then started counting down again like normal. According to my stopwatch, they nearly got it right on the fly, restarting the clock about two seconds off the actual time. The issue is that they kept that time, which actually gave the Golden Knights two extra seconds to tie the game. Can you imagine if they actually scored with less than two seconds left?
  • After the final horn sounded, the Capitals lost their minds. Niskanen jumped around like he hadn’t just played over 24 minutes of hockey. Ovechkin was screaming like a madman and hugged everyone with giant bear hugs. Backstrom dropped an F-bomb as Ovechkin handed him the Cup. It was all delightful.
  • The highlight, however, was T.J. Oshie’s tearful interview with Scott Oake. Oshie talked about his father’s battle with Alzheimers, saying, “He forgets a lot of things, but you bet your ass he's going to remember this.”

 

 

  • Evgeny Kuznetsov may have had led the playoffs in scoring with five more points than Alex Ovechkin, but there was no way the voters were going to give the Conn Smythe to anyone but Ovechkin. NHL Awards are never entirely based on merit, but on narrative as well, and Ovechkin was the far better story. That's not to say he didn't deserve it — he led the playoffs in goalscoring after all — but the narrative of overcoming years of playoff disappointment played a big role in his Conn Smythe win.