But a handful of hours ago, why was I, a grown-ass 54 year-old man, standing tipsy on the corner of 7th and F Streets in Washington, DC, arms outstretched to the heavens, screaming joyously into the night?

Fair question.

Let me explain.

The Early Years (1974 – 1981)

I was 10 when the Washington Capitals came to town in 1974. Nobody played ice hockey in the DMV in the mid-1970s. You might as well have brought an NHL team to Birmingham, Alabama. Equally true, however, is this: in 1974, we had no computers, no video games, no internet, and no iPhones. We had a record player, a radio, a reel-to-reel tape player, and one, small black and white TV with five channels, two of which (20 and 26) were ultra-high frequency meaning, in essence, that one had to have the mad skills of a safe cracker to maneuver the UHF dial with the delicacy and precision necessary to enjoy the high production values of Utraman, Speed Racer, and Kimba the White Lion.

Which simply is to say that a 10-year boy with oodles of free time and a vivid imagination could quite easily add the Capitals to the list of teams through which he already was living vicariously. That is, I already was Sonny Jurgenson, Brooks Robinson, and The Big E, so adding Yvon Labre — a lumbering, jovial, mustachioed defenseman from Sudbury, Ontario — was hardly a heavy lift.

Nor did it hurt that this particular sport involved almost as much fighting as hockey. Slapshot (1977), among the greatest sports movies ever made, only barely exaggerates the level of on-ice violence in the ’70s and ’80s. A game between Minnesota and Boston in 1981 had a combined 67 penalties — in the first period. By 1987-1988, there were over 1,000 fights league-wide per season. Like the Three Stooges and Wile E. Coyote, the Hanson Brothers were catnip to any red-blooded North American boy.

The above notwithstanding, it’s also true that unlike the Las Vegas Knights — bless their overachieving hearts — the Capitals were godawful during their early years. How godawful? In their inaugural season, the Caps won just eight games (out of 80), their starting goalie had a 5.45 GAA, and just two players had more than 30 points. Nor did the ship right quickly. The Caps didn’t make the playoffs until their ninth season (1982-1983), and in those (embarrassing) days of yore, 16 out of 21 teams — over 75 percent — made the playoffs.

But ineptitude is small beer to a 10 year-old sports fanatic. Thus, in the summer of ’75, I saved up my paper route money, went to Herman’s World of Sporting Goods, and bought a pair of roller skates and a street hockey stick. We lived across the street from a barely used tennis court, which was adjacent to the community swimming pool, and it was there, on that tennis court, that I became Yvan Labre, Guy Charron, Denis Maruk, and Ryan Walter. For two or three summers, I skated around and around that tennis court, deking imaginary defensemen and firing abandoned tennis balls against the chain link fence separating the court from the pool, aiming for the Toasted Almonds and Chocolate Eclairs of the six and seven year-olds who had been whistled by lifeguards onto the grassy hill during an adult swim, waiting hungrily for me to fall, and rarely disappointed.

The Almost Glory Years (1982 – 2005)

The tide finally began to turn in 1982, when the Caps began a 22-season stretch during which they made the playoffs 18 times. Coached mostly by Bryan and Terry Murray– each of whom bore a striking, if unfortunate, resemblance to Major Frank Burns — these years featured a host of powerful teams and several Hall of Famers, including Dino Ciccarelli, Mike Gartner, Adam Oates, Rod Langway, Larry Murphy, and Scott Stevens.

But in two-plus decades, the Caps made it past the second round only twice (1990 and 1998) and to the Stanley Cup finals just once (1998). And in their one and only Stanley Cup finals appearance, the Caps had the misfortune of facing a Detroit team that — like the 1927 Yankees and the 1964-1965 Celtics — was among the greatest of all time. Just that one team, the 1997-1998 Red Wings, boasted seven future Hall of Famers. Ridiculous. The Caps were swept 4-0.

It also was during these Almost Glory Years that the lopsided rivalry with the Pittsburgh Penguins began in earnest. Between 1982 and 2005, the teams met seven times in the playoffs, with the Penguins — powered by Mario Lemieux and Jaromir Jagr — winning six of those series. (All-time, Pittsburgh was 9-1 against the Caps in the playoffs before this year, which is simply to say that we have come by this particular psychosis honestly.)

The Ovechkin Years

After finishing near the bottom of the pack in 2003, the Capitals earned the first pick in the 2004 draft and selected 18 year-old Alexander Mikhailovich Ovechkin, a 6’2″, 230 pound bundle of power and energy who only the God of Power Forwards could have created. Ovie announced himself on the very first shift of very his first game by checking Radoslav Suchy so hard into the end boards that the stanchions holding them together broke loose and the game was delayed while the arena was put back together again.

The Russian Machine went on to score two goals in that game, 52 in his rookie year, and 607 to date, earning over his 13 seasons seven Maurice “Rocket” Richard Trophies (most goals), three Ted Lindsay Awards (player MVP), three Hart Memorial Trophies (league MVP), one Calder Memorial Trophy (rookie of the year), and one Art Ross Trophy (most points).

Alex Ovechkin is, in short, the single greatest professional athlete in the history of Washington, DC sports. Period. He is our Babe Ruth, our Wilt Chamberlin, our Tom Brady. Nobody else — not Darrell Green, Art Monk, Sonny Jurgenson, John Riggins, Elvin Hayes, or Wes Unseld — comes close (although in fairness, polite nods to Sammy Baugh and Walter Johnson might be in order).

In addition to Ovechkin’s individual achievements, the Caps have had tremendous regular season success during his years with the club. Between 2007 and 2018,the Capitals finished first in their division eight times and in 2010, 2016, and 2017 won the President’s Trophy (awarded each year to the team with the most standings points in the NHL).

But the team’s playoff woes continued. Indeed, prior to this year, the Caps did not advance past the second round of the playoffs a single time during the Ovechkin Years. And this stretch included particularly soul-crushing losses in 2009 (Pittsburgh), 2010 (Canadiens), 2013 (Rangers), and 2015 (Rangers) after being up 2-0 or 3-1 in each of those series.

So Why Then, Why?

So why did so many of us hang on, year after year, decade after decade, through thin and thinner, the Charlie Brown of hockey fan bases, one Penguin after another pulling the puck away season after season after season? I suppose it’s a tribute to the game, the franchise, and a handful of ideals.

Once seen in person at the highest level, hockey is something to behold. It’s very hard to strike just the right balance of speed, power, athleticism, and artistry necessary to make a sport sublime. Baseball is grand, of course, but pastoral and, for long spells, sleepy — as it should be. Basketball has become plodding, selfish, predictable and, therefore, boring: clear, isolate, drive, kick, shoot, repeat. Football comes closer, and soccer closest, but the former relies too much on brute force and the latter on artistry. Hockey gets it just right, I think. Crushing back check, crisp outlet pass, center-wing crossover, delicate drop pass, vicious slap shot, lurching stick save, slot right rebound, wrist shot roof, jumping water bottle — poetry in motion.

In 45 years, the Capitals have had only two owners, Abe Pollin and Ted Leonsis, both understated, focused, loyal, patient, and fundamentally decent men. In short, these two have ably served as DC’s anti-Snyder. We’ve had a minor character or two in terms of coaches, such as Jim “Have Another Donut” Schoenfeld, but the vast majority — whether successful (like the Murray Bros., Gabby, and Barry Trotz) or less successful (like Bruce Cassidy and Glen Hanlon) — have been class acts: direct and honest with management, players, media, and fans alike. Finally, hockey players in general are among the most articulate, self-effacing, and approachable in all of professional sports, and the 500+ who have donned the red, white, blue, and (briefly) black have been no exception to this rule.

In 2010, having just won the President’s Trophy, Washington faced Montreal in the first round of the playoffs. After taking a 3-1 lead, the Caps proceeded to lose three straight games, the last a heart-rending 2-1 defeat at home in game seven. Mary Ann Wangemann and her 14-year-old daughter were driving home from the game when their car got a flat tire in the middle of the Roosevelt Bridge. While waiting for AAA, a car pulled over and a man got out. It was Brooks Laich, a de facto captain during his 12-season tenure with the Caps and among the classiest players in team history. They told him help was coming but they didn’t know when. He took off his suit jacket, got on his knees, jacked up the tire, changed it, and cautioned them to drive home slowly. Then he apologized for losing game seven, hugged them both, and sent them on their way.

But it’s not just this sport or this franchise that explains why so many of us have hung on so long. There’s more to it than that. For many of us, there has been the hope that this hockey team would — at some point, in some way — affirm certain ideals that, however treacly, we nevertheless have been taught, or have learned, to hold dear; ideals like humility and patience and empathy and fortitude.

And earlier tonight, at long, long last, the Washington Capitals provided precisely such affirmation.

* **

My father built my brother and I a wooden bunk bed in 1975. I asked if he would put in a small shelf above the top bunk for my little transistor radio. He did, and for many years I fell asleep in the fall and winter and early spring to the play-by-play voice of the great Ron Weber, the Hockey Hall of Fame broadcaster who called the Capital’s first 2,000 games.

As a 10 year-old boy, I was those players, skating smoothly across sheets of white ice, hoisting the Stanley Cup above my head. Over the course of the next 45 years, I grew up, went to college, got married, found a career, and helped raise three wonderful kids.

But the dreams of childhood are not so easily shrugged aside, and now and then the days of my youth come back to me in my dreams. And earlier tonight, for a few moments, on the corner of 7th and F Streets, the tables turned, and one of those dreams came back to me in life.



Lovely that.