Washington Capitals on Verge of Writing Latest Chapter in Underachieving History

For the Washington Capitals, anything less than a victory on Wednesday will mean a failure.

At least that’s how the narrative will play out in the media and with fans. Even, perhaps, among management and ownership.

In the playoffs, it’s become something of a trend. The conference finals are unfamiliar territory, but the disappointment of getting tantalizingly close and imploding is all too familiar.

The Capitals’ old coach, Bruce Boudreau, shed his reputation for being unable to work his way into the third round of the playoffs when his new flock, the Anaheim Ducks, beat the Calgary Flames on Sunday to advance to the Western Conference Final against the Chicago Blackhawks.

If the Caps can’t manage to do the same with a Game 7 win over the New York Rangers in their third straight opportunity to eliminate their opponents, there will be no way to salvage the season as a sign of better things to come.

They’ve been here far too often.

With one of the NHL’s biggest stars in Alexander Ovechkin and a well-rounded group of talented skaters that has rarely had trouble putting pucks in nets, the Caps have reached the second round in four of the last seven playoffs.

Where they haven’t been often—not since 1998, in fact—is the Eastern Conference Final.

The goal that has eluded them for 17 long years has been at their fingertips for days now after taking a 3-1 series lead last week, but they can’t seem to grasp it—or rather choke the life out of the Rangers to accomplish it.

Instead, the Caps are on the brink of a classic choke job. Despite being better than the Rangers on most nights, they can’t put them away. There’s no killer instinct.

Game 7 is back on Rangers ice in New York. The Caps dropped their last game at Madison Square Garden and squandered a shot to win at home in Game 6 on Sunday with a 4-3 loss. Bleacher Report's Dave Lozo suggests they dominated in every way but the scoring.

They're in this do-or-die scenario despite the presence of the league’s most prominent sniper in Ovechkin, a goaltender in Braden Holtby who has established himself among the league’s elite this season and a talented collection of defensemen led by John Carlson.

They also boast a coach in Barry Trotz who is widely considered the best the team has had since Ovechkin came aboard in the 2004 NHL draft.

Then again, for all his previous success with the much less talented Nashville Predators, Trotz has never been into the third round. This is only the third time he's been beyond the first.

Same old Caps, it seems.

Just when you thought that the team had turned a corner and was ready to erase the stigma of being a strong regular-season performer but a bust in the playoffs, it takes a step backward. The club outlasted the New York Islanders in Round 1 with a strong finish to Game 7 but has regressed in Round 2.

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Ovechkin hasn’t scored in four games. His dynamic partner, center Nicklas Backstrom, has no points in five. The power play, which relies heavily on these two players and defenseman Mike Green—who has just two assists all spring and none since Game 3 of the first round against the New York Islanders—has gone 0-10 since the opening game of the Rangers series.

It was the best unit in the league with a 25.3 percent success rate in the regular season. In the playoffs, it ranks third-worst at 12 percent.

“It’s been a high-executing power play all year and we’re going to need it to be big,” Trotz told the Washington Post’s Alex Prewitt after Game 6. “When it breaks loose, it’ll break loose. We got this far really with a very limited power play. It’s been a big part of our team all year.”

Translation: I have no idea how to fix it, so we’ll have to find a way to win without it.

Given the Caps' history, that’s a tough sell:

• They dropped a 2-0 series lead against the Pittsburgh Penguins in 2009, losing in a seventh game in the first round.
• In 2010, after dominating the regular season and finishing with eight more points than any other team in the standings, they let a 3-1 series lead slip against the Montreal Canadiens in the playoffs and lost Game 7 in the opening round.
• The Caps were swept in the second round by the Tampa Bay Lightning in 2011 after an impressive five-game series win against the Rangers.
• In their most recent playoff appearance, the Caps won both games at home to take a 2-0 series lead over the Rangers in 2013 only to let New York tie it up—twice—before losing the whole thing in Game 7.

Their legacy as perennial spring underachievers is on the line in this Game 7. With his guarantee that the Caps will be moving on, per NHL.com's Dan Rosen, Ovechkin can either add team success to his resume or further damage his own reputation as a guy who can’t win.

His teammates weren’t nearly as gutsy after the last loss, however. Some of the quotes might even be considered indifferent.

"It’s the best team in the league, so I don’t think anybody’s shocked. It took us until the third period in Game 7 to beat the Islanders. All due respect to them, this is a better team than the Islanders," defenseman Brooks Orpik told J.J. Regan or CSN Washington after Game 6, pointing out the Rangers’ status as the Presidents’ Trophy winners in the regular season.

"Yeah, we lose the game, but life is not over, right?" added forward Evgeny Kuznetsov. "We have the same chance like their guys, 50-50."

And maybe that’s the biggest problem right there. They’re full of excuses. Heaven knows the team is used to having to come up with them at this time of year.

Steve Macfarlane has covered the NHL for more than a decade, including seven seasons following the Calgary Flames for The Calgary Sun. Follow him on Twitter at @macfarlaneHKY.