Capitals feeling toll of grueling Stanley Cup run
survival test. It is called, to the point of cliche, “the hardest trophy to win in professional team sports.” As the Capitals have broken through their second-round hex and stormed to within one victory of hoisting the Cup, they have also discovered a physical and mental toll unique in sports.
Nearly the entire Capitals roster had experienced the Stanley Cup playoffs before, but only a dose that lasted less than a month. Tonight in Las Vegas, where they can close out the Golden Knights and claim the first title in franchise history, the Capitals will play their 24th playoff game in 57 days. Players understand and revere the cost of playing for the Stanley Cup. The Capitals now have a new appreciation for it.
“The longer you play in this league, the more you realize how hard it is,” forward Lars Eller said. “The road to get here is so long. There’s so many ups and downs during the way and so many things that have to go right that you don’t really have any control over sometimes. I don’t see any other sports where it’s harder to reach this point.”
The NHLplayoffs require participants to test themselves in ways other sports do not, both physically and mentally, borrowing from the hardest aspects of all of them. They have the frequency of basketball, the random breaks of baseball and the physicality of football. Players launch themselves into one another at terrific speed, at peak intensity, and use their bodies to block a hunk of frozen rubber hurtling at velocities close to 100 mph.
“When the mind gets real tired, and you think that you can’t do it, you can’t,” coach Barry Trotz said. “Whenyour mind is strong — we have strong minds on our team — you’re able to go way further than you ever thought you could. That’s what you find out when you get these opportunities. You find out what you can take and how much you have to give. You find out that you can take a lot more and you can give a lot more. That’s one of the things that you learn.”
Defenseman Brooks Orpik is the lone Capital who has lifted a Stanley Cup, winning it in 2009 with the Pittsburgh Penguins. After a morning skate before Game 4, he wore thick tape around both hands. Many hits have left Orpik sprawled on the ice since mid-April, but he has kept bouncing up.
“You try to take it day by day and not think about the end of the road,” Orpik said. “If you do it that way, you’re just tiptoeing toward the end. A lot of it is more in your mind than your body. Everybody is in such good shape, your body is capable of doing a lot of things you probably don’t think it can. It’s more kind of tricking your mind.”
The playoffs actually require fewer games than during the regular season, when teams sometimes play on consecutive days and extra off days for travel are not factored in. But the stakes make one playoff game feel like multiple regular-season games packed into one night.
“The emotional toll on your body is just way, way harder and higher,” Eller said. “It swings back and forth so much. It feels like it takes years out of your life.”
“The more that you focus on calming your brain down, calming your body down to be able to fully tell it to recover and not be on edge all the time, I think that’s a huge advantage that I’ve been wary of,” Carlson said.
Capitals players altered their betweengame conditioning routines, eliminating weightlifting and cardiovascular training. Coaches allow players to rest for portions of practices and skip some entirely, at their choosing. Trainers work extra time, con- stantly available for players to use hot tubs, cold tubs, foam rollers and massage tables.
For some players, the extra diligence combined with the adrenaline rush makes the physical strain disappear. “Personally, me right now, I feel better now than I did at the beginning of the playoffs,” forward T.J. Oshie said before Game 4. “We’re rolling.”
NOTE: With the potential for the Capitals to win the Stanley Cup in Las Vegas tonight, free tickets for the Game 5 viewing party inside Capital One Arena went online at 1 p.m. Wednesday. At 1:10 p.m., they were gone. For the ticketless, the Capitals will still broadcast the game on large screens outside Capital One Arena, on 8th Street NWandGStreet. The Navy Memorial at 701 Pennsylvania Avenue will also host a live screening. Washington Metro trains will run for an extra hour.