Capitals’ run to East title ends years of frustration
WASHINGTON — Jimmy Patterson was a fresh-faced 22-year-old in the stands at the old Capital Centre in October 1974 when the expansion Washington Capitals got their first NHL win.
As he was leaving, an elderly man from Brooklyn told Patterson he’d always get to say he saw the Capitals’ first win. The man smiled and added, “You can’t lose ’em all.”
Forty-plus years, more than 3,000 games and 27 unsuccessful playoff runs later, Patterson and legions of longtime Capitals fans finally have a reason to believe that. Many who watched Wednesday night at an arena watch party far from Game 7 at Tampa Bay took to the steps of the National Portrait Gallery to celebrate the Capitals’ first trip to the Stanley Cup Finals since 1998. Game 1 in Las Vegas against the Golden Knights is Monday night.
“It’s been really gratifying,” said Patterson, now 65. “It feels a lot different, and it’s a weird feeling.”
Filling the area, fans chanted, “We want the Cup,” “We want Vegas” and “DC! DC!” in an outpouring of joy decades and crushing losses in the making. Alex Ovechkin’s Capitals are the first Washington team in the major four professional sports leagues to reach the finals in a generation. To get this far, they had to not only outlast the Lightning but survive longtime playoff nemesis Pittsburgh, which has won the past two championships.
“It’s been 20 long, dry years and we are back,” Capitals public-address announcer Wes Johnson said. “This is catharsis. Once we beat the Penguins, then you could see that the fan base was like, ‘Let’s just play hockey.’ As John Walton said, ‘It’s OK to believe. It’s not just OK to believe. Just believe.’ ”
Among markets with teams in the NFL, NBA, NHL and Major League Baseball, only the Twin Cities in Minnesota has a longer championship drought going than Washington. The city’s NFL team won its third Super Bowl title in January 1992 and it has been mostly grim since then. Neither that team nor the Wizards (NBA), Nationals (MLB) and Capitals reached even a league semifinal from 1998 until this spring.
In that same time, Boston’s teams have made 25 league semifinal appearances and won 10 titles.
“This team is so fun,” said Capitals fan George Christo, a Boston transplant who has had season tickets since 1995-96. “This team is the most fun since that ’98 team primarily because, both of those teams, who on Earth expected either of these teams to be able to get this deep and to be that tough?”
Ovechkin knows the feeling.
“We’re going to the Stanley Cup Finals,” Ovechkin said. “I think everybody is happy, but we still have unfinished, you know what I mean?
“I don’t know, I’m emotional right now. I think we’ve been waiting for this moment for a long time.”