Washington celebrates Cup victory
Throngs gather for Capitals as they bring home hockey’s holy grail
WASHINGTON — Multitudes of long-starved Washington sports fans inundated the city Tuesday in a spasm of civic ecstasy that had become a faint memory for older residents and unknown to the young: hailing a champion in one of the big four professional sports.
An immense spring tide of red — Capitals jerseys, towels and signs — that began to build before dawn had swamped a dozen blocks of downtown Washington. By parade time, tens of thousands were jammed shoulder to shoulder simply to be with their joyous National Hockey League team, their well-travelled trophy and their disbelieving neighbours, a mass gathering of the giddy, Community with a Capital C amid a Capitals Sea.
On a sunny day that was still cool enough for the comfortable wearing of thousands of hockey jerseys purchased in recent days, the Washington Capitals capped a dizzying stretch of celebration that began the moment they clinched their first Stanley Cup and the city’s first major sports title in 26 years.
“Now we can celebrate all together and remember this moment for all our lives,” team captain Alex Ovechkin, who has sported a permanent gap-toothed grin for days, wrote on Instagram on Monday afternoon. “Time to party caps fans !!!! ”
At the parade, Ovechkin hoisted the cup from the top of an open-topped double-decker bus, two of which carried the team down the route escorted by motorcycle police and kilt-wearing bagpipers. Some players nursed beer bottles as they waved, emitting and absorbing love decades in the making.
Mayor Muriel Bowser, in a Caps jersey, tossed parade trinkets from one of the buses. Government agencies, including Washington schools and the Pentagon, took part, with the roar of fighter jets and marching bands adding to the bone-shaking cheers along the way.
A Dalmatian howled from the top of a Clydesdale-drawn beer wagon. Cars nearby honked to the beat of an ambient “Let’s Go Caps” chant, a Zamboni drove down a city street and light posts were adorned with new banners. D.C. police sent a mass alert to residents by cellphone that the parade had begun.
Metro planned to run on a rush-hour footing all day to accommodate the crowds that poured from downtown stations. But many fans were in place before the first trains rolled.
Justin Bryam, a 23-year-old from Frederick, Md., was ready to rock the red at the rally stage before dawn. He drove in Monday night, crashed with a family member, was in an Uber by 4:45 a.m. and arrived at the Mall around 5. And he wasn’t the first.
“It was still dark. Cold and dark,” he said, looking out at a crowd that had grown by thousands. “To see this city come together and embrace hockey is just unbelievable to watch.”
The scene included the Caps faithful, who have been waiting for years for such a parade, and bandwagon-jumpers by the thousands. Office workers lined the route alongside pilgrims from up and down the East Coast. Whole swathes of springtime tourists were surprised to find themselves part of a celebration that was more about the people of the city than its status as the seat of the federal government.
Annelie Enstjaerna, 50, and her family arrived from Stockholm on Friday and were taken aback by the size and exuberance of the capital city, transformed for now into the Capitals’ City.
“It’s very American,” Enstjaerna said, comparing the brash bacchanal to the lower-key celebrations in Sweden.
“This is huge.”
What exactly have they won? she asked.
The Stanley Cup, she was told. And there it was, in the midst of it all, towering and gleaming and seemingly undented from the journey it had taken from Vegas to the top of a parade bus, through the locker-rooms and nightclubs and cookouts, passed from player to player and gripped with desperate relief.