Capitals’ Stanley Cup runneth over
After 43 seasons, the Washington Capitals are finally sitting on top of hockey.
Lars Eller broke a tie with 7:37 to play, and the Capitals raised the Stanley Cup for the first time in franchise history after a 4-3 victory over the Vegas Golden Knights in game five yesterday.
Devante Smith-Pelly tied it with a goal midway through the final period of the Capitals’ fourth consecutive victory over the Knights, whose incredible expansion season finally ended in the desert.
So did the Capitals’ agonising wait for their first championship since the franchise’s debut in 1974. After so many years of post-season flops and crushing disappointment, these Capitals won their fourth consecutive closeout game with a tenacious third-period comeback.
Captain Alex Ovechkin, who scored an early power-play goal and was the playoff MVP, and his teammates are Washington’s first championship hockey team – and the city’s first champion in a major pro sport since the Redskins won the Super Bowl in early 1992.
After Vegas won the opener, the Capitals capped their four-game surge by rallying from a thirdperiod deficit in game five, banishing so many years of playoff failure with big goals and tenacious play across their lineup.
Ovechkin scored his franchiserecord 15th goal of the post-season in a cathartic victory for the Capitals.
Braden Holtby made 28 saves yesterday, outplaying three-time Stanley Cup champion Marc-Andre Fleury in the other net.
The Caps couldn’t win a title without a little weirdness, however: The game clock stopped working on the T-Mobile Arena scoreboards during the final minutes, and the Capitals angrily protested while they played on. Vegas never got close to a tying goal.
Reilly Smith scored a go-ahead goal late in the second period for the Golden Knights, who won seven of their first eight home playoff games before dropping the last two.
Nate Schmidt and David Perron also scored in the second period, but Fleury’s 29 saves included a stopped puck that dropped underneath him where Eller swept it home for the Cup-winning goal.
Washington’s Cup-clinching win was their 10th on the road in this post-season, tying the NHL playoff record and illustrating the superior toughness of this team. While past editions of the Caps created their team’s reputation for post-season flops in part by losing five playoff series in which they had won three of the first four games, Ovechkin’s latest group promptly closed out all four of their series this year on the very first try.
And the remarkable Golden Knights hadn’t lost four consecutive games in their entire inaugural season before the Caps rolled them.
The Capitals had thousands of red-clad fans in the Vegas crowd and a building full of supporters watching back home along with countless thousands outside in the crowded DC streets.
AP