It was a team built around a superstar forward capable of putting up 50 goals or more any given year. They squeaked into the Stanley Cup playoffs and lost in seven games in the first round. The following season they won a division title, outlasted a first-round opponent — again in seven games — and were promptly swept in the second round by a bitter rival. A learning experience, right? Not really. They topped 100 points during the next regular season for the first time in 41 years and then lost Game 7 at home in the first round anyway. Then came the true disaster — a No. 1 seed dropping another first-round series. This time to a No. 8 seed under a revamped playoff format. Again, it was a Game 7 at home. Sounds a bit like the Caps’ current resume, doesn’t it?
Nope. That was the Detroit Red Wings in the early 1990s. The dynasty that would win four Stanley Cups between 1997 and 2008 — including one at the expense of the Caps in 1998 — was built on the ashes of those crushing playoff setbacks. Watch the final seconds of the 1994 first-round series between those Wings and the San Jose Sharks on YouTube. Detroit had a 28-year-old Steve Yzerman and a host of young stars led by Sergei Fedorov. Yet as the final seconds tick away during an incomprehensible 3-2 loss in Game 7, the Joe Louis Arena crowd showers its team with boos. Not exactly Hockeytown that night. The players sit stunned on the bench, waiting for the worst handshake line of their lives. Did you catch general manger Bryan Murray in that clip? He doesn’t move an inch sitting in a suite high above the ice. Had that look here in Washington more than a few times, if I remember.
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Does this mean the Caps are destined for the same fate? I can probably find more examples of young, star-laden teams that crashed and burned in NHL history than ones that turned out like Detroit. In what has become everybody’s favorite parlor game in the aftermath of last week’s Game 7 loss to Montreal, New York Post hockey columnist Larry Brooks nominates the early 1970s New York Rangers for that one. But he also makes the Red Wings comparison if the Caps should finally break through — and also the great New York Islanders dynasty of the 1970s and early 80s. All show that progress in the NHL is rarely linear. Yes, it happened for the Penguins, who took one simple step after another en route to their Stanley Cup last season: Bottom out in 2004, win draft lottery after the lockout, pick Sidney Crosby, make playoffs, reach Stanley Cup finals, come back and win it all. Easy, right? Those Red Wings teams prove it isn’t. A lot heartache went into that first Stanley Cup in 1997. A lot of people thought it would never happen and — for a time —Detroit became synonymous with “choke”.
The Caps still have to be smart. They have to identify which key pieces are replaceable, sign the right free agents — but also at the right price. They still need their rising stars — Karl Alzner, John Carlson, Semyon Varlamov, Marcus Johannson — to develop into championship-caliber players. They need to choose their salary-cap casualties wisely (Eric Fehr or Tomas Fleischmann?) and trade the right prospects for any missing piece (Michal Neuvirth, Mathieu Perreault, Braden Holtby?). The team that finally brings a Stanley Cup to the District may have only seven or eight players left on it from the group that made that dramatic playoff run in 2008. If it doesn’t happen in the next two years it may have a different coach, too. But the window is still open. It will be for a while yet.
