Off Wing Opinion

Heading into yesterday's regular season finale with the Boston Bruins, the Washington Capitals had little, if any, unfinished business.  For certain, the team was committed to helping Alex Ovechkin secure his 3rd straight Rocket Richard Trophy.  And there was little doubt in my mind that if the chance presented itself, the team would do everything it could to get Alex Semin his 40th goal and Mike Green his 20th.

Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on your perspective, at this point in the organization's development, individual goals count for little with everyone focused on bringing Washington its first Stanley Cup.  So yes, there was exaltation when Semin tallied his 40th goal in the first period.  But while it might be possible for somebody to have mixed feelings after Ovechkin and Green were kept scoreless during the balance of a 4-3 shootout loss, the overriding buzz in the locker room after the game was one of anticipation.

The preliminaries were over, and now the real business was at hand.

Standing in the locker room after the game, it was hard not to remember just how different the end of the regular season could look here in Washington, and just how far the organization has come in such a short amount of time.

For me, my mind wandered back to the scene following the regular season finale in 2007, the last year that the team failed to make the playoffs.  On April 7, 2007, the Caps went away quietly at home at the hands of the Buffalo Sabres by a score of 2-0.  Though it was only three years ago, and it was already apparent that Ovechkin was the sort of transcendent talent that would eventually catapult Washington back into playoff contention, the fans hadn't come back yet.  Instead, the stands that day were filled with noisy Sabres fans, either folks from Western New York who decided to spend a long weekend in the nation's capital, or just some of the many local residents who were transplants from the economically depressed Buffalo region.

In the bowels of Verizon Center after that game, the press gaggle around Buffalo head coach Lindy Ruff was pretty deep -- and why wouldn't it be, with the team having just completed the regular season with the league's best record.  That Sabres team was just one year removed from an appearance in the Eastern Conference Finals, and was one of the prohibitive favorites to win it all that Spring.

Unfortunately for those Sabres, the burden of increased expectations was too much for them to handle, and they went down meekly in the Eastern Conference Finals to the Ottawa Senators.

The postgame presser with then-Caps coach Glen Hanlon wasn't as well attended.  Back then, Hanlon's postgame comments were always delivered in a small room just off the entrance to the hallway that leads to the Caps locker room.  Even though there were few of us in attendance, I'll never know how we all managed to fit into that room.  The mood there, like it had been in the Caps locker room, was actually pretty hopeful.  Talking to Hanlon, Olie Kolzig and Chris Clark that day, it was more than clear that the team had turned a corner, and that better days were just ahead.  And all of them were looking forward to being part of the fun.

Of course, none of them are around now that the party is really getting started. 

Today, Bruce Boudreau's postage press conferences are now held in an interview off the main press lounge, a room big enough to handle rows of chairs and more camera crews than I ever remember seeing crowd into the broom closet where Hanlon used to take questions.  A locker room that used to be easy to navigate is always crowded, and its about to get even more crowded once Montreal comes to town for Game 1 of the first round of the playoffs on Thursday night.

Today, it's the Capitals who posted the best record in the regular season, and now it's this team that needs to work under the burden of increased expectations.

What will the result be?  We all know that the same kind of pressure that breaks most substances also turns coal into diamonds.  But we also need to know that not every ride to the Stanley Cup is an uninterrupted escalator ride to success.  Even the best team of the post-Original Six era, the Edmonton Oilers, experienced a dramatic setback before winning five Cups in a seven-year stretch.  In the Spring of 1983, Gretzky, Messier, Kurri and all the rest were the favorites heading into the finals against an aging and battered Islanders squad.  But only four games later, the same team that would write its name in history was left battered at the hands of the dynastic Islanders in a four-game sweep.

But if you talk to those players now, to a man, they'll tell you how that loss made possible all of the victories that came later on.  Sometimes you need to take one step back to get that extra step up to be successful.

Over the past three years, the Caps have made multiple incremental improvements in all aspects of their on-ice performance, incremental improvements that have culminated in the best regular season performance in the team's history.  They are the favorite to win it all, and anyone who tells you they aren't is stone cold crazy.

I don't have any doubt that we will see Alex Ovechkin lift the Cup above his head as a Stanley Cup champion here in Washington.  Will they do it this year?  My heart says yes, but my head, filled with decades of memories of other clubs with broken dreams, isn't so certain.  I guess I'll just have to stick around to find out.