Ovi knows Game 7 heartache
But they have less depth than last year’s team, didn’t look like this in the regular season, and still, they look so … free.
Ovechkin has carried a lot of weight over the years, and some of it was earned. He has also lost seven Game 7s in his 10 post-seasons: four by the coin-flip score of 2-1, another in overtime, and two blowouts, one of which was in Pittsburgh. Every year the story grew: Ovechkin was not clutch, could not do it when it counted. Some years, it was true.
But Ovechkin’s playoff career can be sliced into clear tranches: his first four years, when the Capitals all-out attacked and he produced like a demon: 25 goals and 50 points in his first 37 playoff games. All-time greatness.
But the Capitals lost to Montreal in seven in 2010, and were swept by Tampa in 2011. So Dale Hunter played him like a second-line forward in 2012, which opened his second stage: 21 goals and 40 points in Ovechkin’s next 60 playoff games with the Capitals trying to play defensive hockey, blocked-shot hockey, capital-P Playoff hockey. Longtime Capitals defenceman Karl Alzner talked about it before Game 7 last year.
“The problem that we were having is, we were trying to play what everyone thought was playoff hockey, and we weren’t playing good,” Alzner said last year to a small group of reporters before Game 7 against Pittsburgh. “It was just kind of grind it out, throw everything at the net. You know everyone always says there’s no bad shots in the playoffs? Sometimes there are bad shots.
“We’ve just kind of, I don’t know, had more fun and enjoyed handling the puck a little bit more, and when guys are touching the puck they seem to get a little more mojo going.”
Then they lost. Late in the second, playing on a bad knee, Ovechkin had a chance to tie the game from the slot, and it hit the shaft of Marc-André Fleury’s goal stick. Fleury grinned. Would that have changed things? After the game, Ovechkin spoke slowly, dazed, wrapped in red towels. “We’re trying,” he said after a pause. “Try to do our best.”
Now, with a lesser roster, Ovechkin is two wins from his first Stanley Cup final. He’s been great before, of course. In their four playoff series, Crosby has 13 goals and 30 points; Ovechkin has 15 and 33. Crosby’s team beat Washington in 2016 with Sid getting just two assists in his six games. Crosby is the better player of his generation. But it has always taken a team.
So what if the Capitals have enough goaltending, enough speed, enough secondary scoring? Ovechkin is playing with the passion of his youth, after his general manager agreed he needed to get away from the rock-star lifestyle, after his blue period, after his team took the wrong lessons from losing to the hottest goalies in the world. What if he actually wins?
“A lot of guys have great careers and don’t have a Stanley Cup to show for it, but more than anything, it’s personal,” said Alzner last year. “I think he wants to win for the fact that he wants to win a Cup. That’s the whole reason that we’re here. So I don’t think it’s going to make a difference for him in the end, because it’s going to be an amazing career that he has, but for him, to just quiet down everybody else, it would be nice to have one of those.”
“For players, we carry a lot of our pasts with us, for sure,” said then-Capitals defenceman Kevin Shattenkirk on that same day. “It can be hard to overcome those past experiences. But every year we get a new opportunity to change that. All it takes is one year. I think that’s the most important thing. That’s the message I try to convey to these guys is that, ‘Who cares? If it happens this year, no one is going to remember the years previous.’ ”
One year later, here they are. Ovechkin has a chance.