Sports Metaphors for Today: Washington Capitals Hockey... Try, Try Again (2 of 3)
Let’s dive into Spring 2010 a little more.
The Washington Capitals were an absolute juggernaut. They had captured the Presidents’ Trophy, awarded to the team with the best regular season, with a staggering 121 points in the regular season (54 wins out of 82 games). And they did it with swagger, playing a brand of exciting, high tempo, skilled hockey.
Driving it all was a league MVP, a true face of the franchise player who felt like he was still on the ascendency. It was a hockey version of an emerging Victor Wembanyama. The Caps were a finely tailored, Italian suit. Sleek, stylish, and turning every head and ready to finally reach the promised land.
But then Jaroslav Halak happened. And the Caps fell flat.
Again.
Halak was the 2010 instance of a hot goalie in what seemed like a yearly assembly line for the Capitals. The kind of autonomous inevitability that franchise players are supposed to break.
Except Ovechkin and company didn't, resulting in another blown playoff series lead after being up three games to one.
It was a sudden, violent, unexpected downpour. That pristine suit didn't just get a little wet; it got ruined by the pelting rain and splatters of mud and grime from trying to run for cover. It was a unique, specific, acute flavor of disappointment.
It’s quite a different animal entirely to choke when you are an overwhelming favorite.
The 2009-10 iteration of the Washington Capitals were viewed by many as Cup favorites going into the postseason and played that way through the first five games.
The last three games? The Caps offense still generated shots, but the goals dried up. It all ended with an inglorious whimper in game seven where the Habs notched one measly goal, but that was still enough to win because the Caps, with one of the greatest offenses in team history, came up with goose eggs.
Zilch. Nadda. Negative Ghost Rider, the pattern is full.
It was a statistical anomaly that made the Caps’ fortunes feel like a targeted, personal curse.
Hockey – Strong Link Game But Still a Team Sport
Ovechkin was supposed to be able to change that. Franchise players do that, right? Their careers are defined by owning the moment, overcoming obstacles their more average peers cannot. And Ovechkin looked like he was made for the playoff spotlight.
In his first playoff game ever, he delivered the winning goal on an incredible individual effort. It looked like a nothing play with him coming in alone on the forecheck. Then one a poke check, the churning feet as he hustled to stick lift another player, finally outwaiting the goalie to put it over* him seemed to announce that he was just an empty calorie regular season performer but one capable of elevating his game for the postseason.
It made me think of Larry Bird's iconic steal and dish versus the Pistons.
Although the Caps would go on to lose to the Flyers in the first round that year, nobody felt like Ovechkin had come short. It was an accepted convention that players and teams need to suffer a bit and learn year over year before winning the Stanley Cup. Okay, cool, so Ovie was no different but you could see the upward trajectory.
The next year, his second in the playoffs, the Caps played the Rangers in the first round but fell behind three games to one. But the Caps rallied and he helped the Caps overcome their come from behind story to take the series. One of his goals remains a career highlight even as he nears retirement, one where he danced around the entire Rangers team showing silky smooth hands, which belied the runaway train aura he played with
Then there was yet another memorable series in the next round against the Pittsburgh Penguins that featured the dueling hat tricks by him and Sidney Crosby in game two.
The Caps would win the first two games of that series, but would eventually lose it (again), falling flat in game seven
But they continued to grow and the next year was 121 point year, landing them home ice advantage throughout the playoffs. Going in, it felt like this would finally be their year.
Until it wasn’t.
The loss lingered. Next year, the Caps were still good but not quite as dominant and the upward trajectory stalled against the glass ceiling again they were swept by the Tampa Bay Lightning in the second round of the playoffs.
When you are young, it always feels like you have time. Next year, next year, you would tell yourself. But history and literature tell us arcs don't always go up. Sometimes they flatten.
Or fall.
The Hero’s Journey
To understand the agony of being a Capitals fan, I think it’s helpful to look at the team through the lens of the Hero’s Journey.
The Hero’s Journey is essentially a story template where the protagonist, e.g., the Hero, goes on an adventure, eventually is victorious over crisis, and returns changed/transformed.
The literary version is more involved but there is a Hollywood version most credit to writer Christopher Voglar that has been applied to many a movie, e.g., Star Wars, and is broken into three phases.
- Departure (Call to Adventure/Leaving Safety Behind)
- Initiation (Hero is tested)
- Return (The Hero shares their trophy/accomplishment)
Well, the Caps (and Ovi’s) second phase was starting to look like a cruel version of Groundhog Day.
It would never end.
The feeling is best summed up by taking a look at where the Capitals blew playoff series leads. What follows is a chronological breakdown of every series in franchise history where the Caps had won either the first two games or three of the first four, only to go on and lose the series.
This doesn't even get into the series where the Caps were the higher seed or favorites and just lost outright. At that point, we'd be entering into the horror genre.
Capitals Blown Multi-Game Series Leads History
For historical reference, in total, the Capitals have surrendered a 2-0 series lead seven times (although one occurred after the won the Cup) and a 3-1 series lead five times (with 1992 overlapping as both). This stands as a dubious “most by any single franchise in NHL playoff history”… and almost half came during the Ovechkin-era.
Initiation on Loop
Watching this play out with my engineering mindset was like watching a production system fail over and over. The system would repeatedly crash at almost the exact same point in the production cycle. You try everything, including reorganizing and bringing outside talent and products, and it still doesn’t work.
Ovechkin, despite his prodigious talent, seemed to get consumed by the endless cycle of Initiation that had a grip on the team, as opposed to leading them through it.
It wasn’t until they finally won a Cup and I had a chance to reflect on his career, that it dawned on me how he went through his own Hero’s Journey.
If the Capitals’ journey was a forty-year trek through the desert, Ovechkin was the man explicitly tasked with finally parting the Red Sea. He was the face of the franchise, the generational talent who was the Reward in the story, dragging a cursed organization out of the mud and into the promised land.
But a Hero's Journey, like life, is not a straight line.
Every early playoff exit accumulated and was placed squarely on his broad shoulders as if he were Atlas. The praise gradually shifted to criticism as time went on. The goals and points still came but not as rapidly, and with his own play as well as the team’s becoming less electrifying, the pundits soured on him and the whispers grew louder that he couldn't lead a team to the ultimate prize.
They essentially called him a flashy silk pocket square. Sure, he was great for a brilliant pop of color, but entirely useless when you actually needed to wipe the grime and sweat off your brow in the trenches.
It turns out even the most talented among us have to learn lessons from the School of Hard Knocks. It’s the exact same lesson we learn in any normal professional team setting: you cannot carry the entire team on your back for long, no matter how talented you are or how hard you work.
And that experiencing failure does not guarantee success is behind the next door.
To be continued...