IN THE PAST three years, the face of the Washington Capitals has changed from a grizzled goalie to a superstar Russian who’s missing a tooth.
And it was inevitable that a young team with a bright future and new identity would be forced to move forward.
Yet that doesn’t lessen the sorrow of last week’s announcement that Olaf Kolzig will be looking for employment elsewhere next season.
The 2000 Vezina Trophy winner and the only goalie to lead the Capitals to the Stanley Cup finals found himself on the bench as Washington returned to the postseason this year.
Cristobal Huet, acquired at the trade deadline, earned his place as a starter by winning the team’s final seven regular season games to reach the playoffs.
It is the smart decision to keep Huet to build around a young team anchored by Alex Ovechkin.
But watching Olie the goalie on another team will be really odd.
Kolzig was drafted way back in 1989 — when Bart was still the main character of ”The Simpsons„ — and has played in a whopping 711 games for the Caps and achieved 301 wins.
Most impressively, Kolzig survived the purge of 2004 when Washington began its rebuilding process.
He saw some of the best and worst times in the team’s history.
We wish Kolzig a fond farewell, knowing his departure is probably best for both sides.
Photo by Toni L. Sandys/The Washington Post
ANOTHER SEASON ENDED in disappointment for the Washington Capitals on Tuesday, but this time the locker room laments were not about the pains of rebuilding, but about barely missed chances, refereeing and other small things that separate winning from losing at the highest level. There was a quiet confidence in the room. The Caps were eliminated, but they also had arrived.
"Fourteen of our players had never played in the Stanley Cup playoffs, and now we've got a series under our belt. We've got a Game 7 overtime under our belt," center Brooks Laich said. "I think that's going to bode well for us in the future. Right now we're disappointed, but I think it'll be a great learning experience."
The Caps' sterling record under coach Bruce Boudreau and the glut of young talent at his disposal left many at Verizon Center looking forward to next year rather than back at a difficult first-round series. Owner Ted Leonsis declared once again that "we have a plan that's working" and that seven games against Philadelphia "was like getting their MBA in a summer program, where they aged dramatically."
YOU MAY NOT SEE HIM, but you'll certainly hear him.
When the Capitals come back to Verizon Center on Saturday, Sam Wolk will be there with his horn. He has season tickets, and has spent almost every game this season — and for the last eight seasons — in section 415, blowing his horn to the tune of "Let's go Caps!"
Wolk's wife, Sherri Muzzuco, introduced him to hockey and the two of them have been season ticket holders since 1999. The original horn, which Wolk started bringing that season, was crushed by Penguins fans in 2000, and this season, Wolk wrapped his new horn in a red scarf to match the Caps new colors.
"Sometimes you need to get the house rocking. If we kill a penalty, I'll blow it. I always blow it right after a goal's scored," says Wolk, who adds that he won't blow it when the Caps are on special teams. "Then I'll do it when there's a lull and I feel like we need to do it."
Wolk was in the stands for the Caps' run to the Stanley Cup in 1998, and he said watching Peter Bondra made him a Caps fan. But he says Alex Ovechkin is more fun to watch and the arena is louder now than he's ever seen it.
Continue Reading "Noise Maker: Caps Fans Reach Fever Pitch" »
HOLDING COURT FRIDAY NIGHT night inside the Capitals' locker room, Ted Leonsis bypassed a toast in favor of a boast.
Any why not? His team — which only months ago was on its way to a third straight terrible season with few fans to show for it — had just won its first playoff game in five years in front of a sold-out crowd sporting mohawks and red jerseys.
"We've built something really special here, and it's going to stay for a long, long time," said the Capitals' owner, who was also wearing one of his team's red jerseys.
Just before the 2004 lockout, Leonsis and General Manager George McPhee took a wrecking ball to a solid team that would never have been good enough to win the Stanley Cup and started over.
Continue Reading "Swengali: Caps Have Built Something Great" »
THE EUPHORIA OF THE CAPITALS' stirring third-period comeback in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference quarterfinals vanished as abruptly as an open-ice hit on Sunday as the Philadelphia Flyers offered several young Capitals players a crash-course in playoff hockey.
"I don't think we were as good as we can be, but I thought Philadelphia made us look pretty bad. ... Hopefully, it was a cheap lesson, but we'll see," Caps coach Bruce Boudreau said. "Philadelphia outplayed us, outworked us and out-won the battles on us. We now know we've got to pay a bigger price if we want to succeed."
The Caps' first defeat in more than three weeks evened the best-of-seven series at 1-1, with the third game Tuesday night in Philly.
To get back on track the Caps will have to figure out how to free Alex Ovechkin, Alexander Semin, Mike Green and the rest of their playoff debutantes from the relentless pursuit that left them befuddled on Sunday. Ovechkin said playoff hockey was "faster" and "more physical" than regular season competition and it showed, as the NHL's leading scorer had little room to maneuver and his line, centered by rookie Nicklas Backstrom, was unable to keep the puck.
Continue Reading "Sports Talk: Youngsters Get Abrupt Wake-Up Call" »
Express' Christopher Porter had a fever dream while at a Washington Capitals game; the story told hereafter is part fanciful jest, aided by the "oaky afterbirth" of Paul Mason.
IT WASN'T THE SMOOTH JAZZ BAND that greeted the suddenly mellow-romantic hockey fans who entered the Verizon Center on Sunday that made the Capitals lose to the Flyers. (Did Bobby Clark get to pick the outside-the-arena music? Note to Ted: Darkest Hour might be a better choice to fire up beer-chugging puckheads.)
And it wasn't the Caps' turnovers, lost face-offs and bad line changes, or the Flyers' stifling play and consistent bodychecks, that tied the playoffs series one game apiece before Tuesday's tilt in Philly.
Express alone can exclusively reveal the real reason the Capitals were defeated. The damning camera-phone-snapped evidence is after the jump:
WASHINGTON, D.C., DOESN'T have a great rep for supporting heavy metal; it's more of a go-go, punk, hip-hop and indie rock kinda town.
And football-and-basketball-loving D.C. seems to always get a bad rep for its hockey fandom (or lack thereof).
But with the Washington Capitals having the greatest player on the planet in Alexander Ovechkin, winning the Southeast Division last week and heading to the playoffs for the first time since 2003, the Verizon Center has seemed more like the center of Hockeytown, not Chinatown.
Meanwhile, the increasingly popular thrash-death-metal band Darkest Hour is comprised of D.C. residents who not only bang their heads on stages from here to Europe and beyond, they also love to smash the glass at the hockey rink.
"Hockey and heavy metal, to me, are just like peanut butter and chocolate," said guitarist and ex-youth puck player Mike Schleibaum.
It's a match made in underdog, arena-rocking heaven.
Fired up by the Capitals' run toward the postseason — which starts Friday at Verizon Center against the Philadelphia Flyers — Darkest Hour went into the studio and recorded a new arena anthem to pump the crowd and the players. "Let's Go Caps!" can be heard and downloaded from a special MySpace page Darkest Hour set up at myspace.com/letsgocapsmusic.
Express spoke to Schleibaum about his band's new fight song, his favorite sports anthems, hockey fandom and what sort of party Darkest Hour will throw when (not if) the Caps win the Cup.
Continue Reading "Playoff Anthem: Darkest Hour's 'Let's Go Caps!'" »
A SOLD-OUT ARENA, nearly unprecedented national coverage and more local buzz since the month before Jaromir Jagr proved worthless — whether or not the Washington Capitals sneak into the NHL playoffs, their resurgence and race for a berth has meant great things for a once-moribund franchise.
The Caps' postseason fate likely won't be determined until Saturday night, when they will have one eye on visiting Florida and the other on the out-of-town scoreboard. To rebound from the league cellar required a turnaround that began with the Thanksgiving hiring of Bruce Boudreau but gathered steam in late February, when GM George McPhee pulled the trigger on three trades. The Caps were 13-4-0 between then and Thursday's game against Tampa.
While winger Matt Cooke is lesser known and goalie Cristobal Huet's contributions are statistically obvious, the impact made by veteran Sergei Federov, 38, has been immeasurable. A former MVP and three-time Stanley Cup champ, Federov had just one goal in his first 16 games as a Cap. But his nine assists, including two in Tuesday's win over Carolina, only begin to tell the story. He's also nearly unbeatable on faceoffs and, while centering the second line, has played with an intelligence and precision that has been a critical for a young team.
Continue Reading "Sports Talk: Federov's Impact Is Immeasurable" »
JOURNEY'S "DON'T STOP BELIEVING" blared in the locker room Tuesday night following the Washington Capitals' emphatic 4-1 dismantling of the division-leading Carolina Hurricanes. The victory, before a roaring, red-clad crowd of more than 18,000, was the Caps' ninth in 10 games and marked the rejuvenated club's first five-game winning streak in seven years. It also lifted it to within a hair of a playoff berth — something that seemed impossible just four months ago.
But that's all it did.
"We haven't accomplished anything yet, and we know that," defenseman Mike Green said. "These next two games are the biggest games of our careers."
Washington (41-31-8) hosts Tampa on Thursday and Florida on Saturday, but wins against the already eliminated rivals will not guarantee the Caps' first playoff berth since 2003. The permutations are complicated and involve up to five other teams. The most attractive scenario would involve Carolina's (42-32-6) dropping a point in either Wednesday night's game against Tampa or Friday against Florida, which would give Washington (with two wins) the division title and third seed.
Continue Reading "Sports Talk: Caps Take Step Up, But Not Into Playoffs" »
The Scene: Washington Capitals vs. Carolina Hurricanes, April 1, 2008. It was the biggest game of the year for our nation's Captials, and the sold-out crowd was the most raucous I've ever seen at Verizon Center — especially up in the 400 level where I had parked my butt. What follows is a true accounting of the lady-in-front-of-me's fandom — but not necessarily for hockey.
"IT'S MINE," screamed the 60-something woman with the fluffy feathered hair and grandma glasses.
She brought her two claws down on top of the silver torpedo that had landed in my hands like a priceless gift from the Magi, not a smushed prize fired my way by a dude in a giant bird suit.
As she ripped the Chipotle burrito from my digits, spiced grains sprinkled my cranberry T-shirt — the closest I could come to red in my wardrobe, not counting my inappropriate-for-the-occasion Detroit Red Wings jersey.
I looked at my stunned friend ... and we started to laugh.
I was just accosted by a fellow Caps fan over a free burrito tossed by team mascot Slapshot — that all was funny enough. But the greatest thing about the mauling was this elderly woman's full morphing into a squirrel:
Continue Reading "Hey, Hey, Burrito Lady: Hockey Food Fights" »
Addison Road
