Now maybe this is loser talk. Playoff hockey teams have to grab every inch, seize every opportunity, sharpen every blade, climb every mountain, verbalize every cliche. “It’s going to be a grown-ups game, a grown man’s game,” as Toronto goalie Frederik Andersen put it, and in a grown-ups game, it doesn’t matter what anyone deserves.

But my bosses requested a big-picture column to advance this latest postseason adventure, and there’s not much more you can say about the most complete Capitals team we’ve ever seen. They had the most points in the NHL this season, the best goal differential, the fewest goals allowed, the most wins at home. They had the best goal differential in the first period, and the best goal differential in the third period. They had 59 points in their first 41 games, and 59 points in their last 41 games. They were the best hockey team out there, and it wasn’t that close.

And this didn’t come out of nowhere. The Caps now have 111 wins over the past two seasons — 13 more than any other franchise. They’ve scored 140 more goals than their opponents, a total that’s 55 percent better than their closest rival. They have the NHL’s best record at home in those two years. They also have the NHL’s best record on the road.

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And that didn’t come out of nowhere, either. The Caps are one of three teams with more than 1,000 points over the last decade. The other two teams, Pittsburgh and Chicago, have combined for five Stanley Cups in 10 years. The Caps have some commemorative Presidents’ Trophy T-shirts. So yes, they deserve to finally win it all.

It isn’t just the franchise in the abstract, either. Alex Ovechkin has the most points in the NHL over the last decade. He has the most goals, too, with a lead as wide as his rookie-year smile. The guy could spend the next two seasons reading Chekhov at his parents’ dacha, and he wouldn’t lose that advantage. Here is a generational talent, who has defied age and style of play to keep firing pucks into nets. Despite popular belief, he’s also one of the league’s most potent postseason scorers.

And yet you can already imagine a future in which every retrospective about Ovechkin’s career includes a sentence beginning with “and yet,” a future of comparisons to Marino and Barkley and Bonds, a future of cretinous sports-radio callers repeating that hysterical joke about the guy walking into the bar and ordering an “Ovechkin.” (No, I’m not telling it.) That’s a bad future. Alex Ovechkin deserves a Stanley Cup.

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Then there’s Barry Trotz. Washington’s coach is sixth in NHL history in regular-season wins. The five men above him have a combined 17 Stanley Cups. Trotz, like Ovechkin, has never been past the second round. He inherited a depressingly aimless team in Washington, a team which — in the expression du jour — saw its window potentially closing. Trotz smashed the window back open, then turned the AC on full blast while hanging up air fresheners. The little tree kind. And the Caps have won more games in his three years than in any three-year span in their history, while virtually banishing internal discontent. That’s a coach who deserves a Stanley Cup.

Don’t forget about GM Brian MacLellan. His hiring three years ago caused some hand-wringing, but the general manager has remade Washington’s defense, built the deepest forward corps in the Rock the Red Era, swindled his peers (they traded what for T.J. Oshie?), and given his team one final shove this winter by acquiring Kevin Shattenkirk.

Going all-in can be terrifying, but so can missing out on your best chance to win, so MacLellan decided “the time is now, and we’ll deal with the rest of it later,” as he told Isabelle Khurshudyan this week. With apologies to Mike Rizzo, it’s been the best three-year debut for a Washington GM since Bobby Beathard. That performance deserves a Stanley Cup.

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There are more on the list. Nicklas Backstrom, who might be the second-most accomplished athlete in Washington, with a binder full of stories about how much he’s underappreciated. The coaches and scouts responsible for drafting and developing young talents like Evgeny Kuznetsov and Andre Burakovsky. Everyone involved in turning Braden Holtby from an uncertain prospect into a Vezina Trophy winner.

And hey, the sports writers deserve this, too. You can critique little things the Caps have done over the past two years — the decision to play immobile defenseman Mike Weber against the Penguins last spring, or the fact that a Braden Holtby bobblehead was chosen over the superior poofed-hair Justin Williams model. But there have been so many correct decisions, so much good fortune and good health, so many wins. None of us wants to spend late May pretending — in between NFL minicamps — to know what the Caps should have done differently.

Finally, there are the fans. Washingtonians will never earn the national sympathy so easily given to Cleveland or Chicago, but there’s a pathos in rooting for this hockey team. There are the 10 times the Caps have lost two-game series leads. The two Presidents’ Trophy thrill-rides that both ended in postseason ditches. The litany of Game 7 horrors. Match all that with the 25 years since the Redskins won a Super Bowl, and … well, here’s Sportsnet’s Sean McIndoe, explaining why unaffiliated fans should now cheer for the Caps: “This team has been over a decade in the making,” he wrote. “Their fans deserve to see them win.”

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So will they finally do it? Eh, probably not. In the NHL’s absurdist coin-flippity postseason, oddsmakers would certainly make the Caps a major underdog to win it all. And you won’t convince me the past is completely irrelevant until Ovechkin is marching past the Trump International.