SportsPulse: The Vegas Golden Knights are going to the Stanley Cup Final. Trysta Krick looks at how the impossible became possible. USA TODAY Sports
Washington sports fans have it tough. Every year teams in other cities win championships and then they visit the White House, which sort of feels like rubbing it in.
Washington’s baseball teams haven’t won a World Series since 1924, when they were the Senators. The Washington Wizards haven’t won an NBA title since 1978, when they were the Bullets. Washington’s NFL teams haven’t won a Super Bowl since 1992, when they were … what they somehow still are.
And then there are the Washington Capitals. They haven’t won a Stanley Cup since, well, never.
This could be the year. Words to that effect are uttered nearly every spring in Washington – and then the Caps flutter to Earth like spent cherry blossoms.
Wednesday night the Capitals will play Game 7 of the conference finals at top-seeded Tampa. If the Caps can win – and yes, that’s a big if, as their elimination-game history is a tad sad – they would advance to the Stanley Cup Final. And there they would find the Las Vegas Golden Knights, an honest-to-goodness expansion team.
Wait, a newborn club could win the Cup in its first season? Yeah, right – next you’ll be telling us that you can win the presidency without having run previously for elective office.
The woebegone history of Washington’s major team sports over the past couple of decades is well known in the District of Columbia and its suburbs in Virginia and Maryland. Forget winning championships: These four franchises could not reach so much as conference finals from 1998, when the Capitals got swept by the Detroit Red Wings in the Stanley Cup Final, until 2018.
That’s when the Caps reached these Eastern Conference finals with a full-throated civic exorcism of their traditional tormentors, the Pittsburgh Penguins. The region reacted like Oz when Dorothy’s house falls on the witch, with huzzahs all around and even idle talk that it wouldn’t matter if the Capitals got no further.
Then they won the first two games in Tampa. Hallelujah! Surely this augured a trip to the Cup Final and a chance at last to sip from Lord Stanley’s chalice.
Except these are the Caps. The Sporting News did the math: The Capitals are 13-43 in their history after taking two-game series leads, whether 2-0 or 3-1. That’s an inexplicable win percentage of .232 for teams talented enough to have taken those leads.
But Wednesday’s Game 7 can wash all that away – or perpetuate the pain. Take your pick, absolution or annihilation.
For those keeping score at home, the Senators last won a World Series during the Coolidge administration, the Wizards last won an NBA title during the Carter administration and the Washington NFL team last won a Super Bowl during the George H.W. Bush administration.
That means the administrations of Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama welcomed tons of teams from the hinterlands since last a Washington team made the short trip to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for a championship celebration.
Now the Caps – born during the Ford administration just weeks after Nixon’s ended –hope to break a quarter-century dry spell for Washington’s forlorn foursome. And if the Capitals, who’ve never won so much as a game in the Stanley Cup Final, can turn the world upside down and win the whole shebang this year, they’d surely get an invitation to the executive mansion just blocks from their home ice.
And Caps captain Alex Ovechkin – Putin’s pal – would be bound to feel right at home in Trump’s White House.
