@triggercut We should all add, if Vegas loses, I don’t think they will recapture this moment again for some time. There are so many things that have to go right to get to the playoffs, I think luck and the energy of a new organization had a lot to do with it.
NBC is going to show another game tomorrow! Hurray!
Well the Caps did it. I didn’t think it would happen, certainly not after Game 1 of the series but they did it. I can’t begrudge them for winning, they’ve suffered a lot of heartbreak over the years. And now Ovechkin will no longer be the best player to never win a Stanley Cup.
Agree that I can’t begrudge the Caps, even though I wanted the Knights to win or at least make it more of a series. After Game 1, the Caps just imposed their will on the Knights in each game. I thought I heard that the Knights beat both the Caps and the Lightning in all 4 regular season games they played against each team. If that is correct, I’m not sure how the Caps so convincingly flipped the script in the Finals, but it was impressive. And at least Crosby didn’t win the Cup again…
YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAS!!!
I’ve lived in St. Louis, I’ve lived in Chicago…neither is an nutso a hockey town as DC.
Scene outside and away from the sold-out Capital One Arena downtown (they were playing in Vegas…)
“Were are not going to be suck this year!” – Alex Ovechkin, October 2017.
Go get that hardware, Captain.
What are the hockey analysts going to say about the Capitals now? For decades they’ve just had to say “can’t win the big game” whenever Washington comes up.
Yeah, it really didn’t feel close from game 3 onward. Last night was back-and-forth, but Vegas looked like they were playing catch-up to a faster, more skilled opponent all night. Even when they took the lead briefly, the momentum still leaned toward Washington.
You lived in Chicago during he bad days of Dollar Bill Wurtz. It’s very different now, I can assure you.
Making it to the Finals means the Knights had a magical, splendid, overachieving season.
If the Caps had not won this, they would be a cursed and haunted team for the ages. The pressure was all on the Caps.
I though it was a great game. The Capitals clearly had the better team in the series, but the Knights played with great intensity through most of the game, and had the Caps back on their heels a couple of times.
Well I mean they beat a first year team for their Cup, that was to be expected :D
I was in that big crowd outside the arena in DC. Left before the end to not get caught in madness getting home afterwards, but it was a good vibe overall and fun to be there and see everyone so excited about hockey.
How big was that save by Holtby at the end of game 2 to hold onto the lead? I imagine the series could have gone very differently if the Caps had lost that game in OT and went down 2-0.
I love watching Hockey but the better team won. Vegas was off all night - so many bad passes, or just chucking it down to the corner. They were playing chaos hockey - which they seem to thrive and do well with, but it can’t beat an efficient, ruthlessly good team that is methodically good.
The capitals consistently pushed the puck beyond the blue line while maintaining possession, they hustled more to any loose pucks and had people in position to take advantage.
But it was still a great game to watch. Vegas has heart and putting a team together of such misfits and creating such great lines was a huge achievement and can not be overlooked. A friend of mine commented that the best thing Vegas could do is to not protect anyone when Seattle goes looking for players - it would be the ultimate statement “we’re all good” - but you know that won’t happen b/c they did have great players that rose to the top b/c they were given the opportunity to play on the 1st line instead of the 3rd line.
It really shows hockey is full of great players and the lines & opportunities they are given can make or kill a star.
Maybe next year, the networks will broadcast all the games on regular tv instead of only a few games.
It’s worth noting that – evidence be damned – the stigma attached to European players in general and Russian players in particular in the NHL when Ovi joined the Caps was that they were soft and didn’t care “enough” about the Cup to play hard in the playoffs. I mean, plenty of players from Fedorov to Konstantinov should’ve been ample evidence to dispel that nonsense, but apparently not.
If nothing else, Ovi’s amazing career stands as a middle finger to that whole “Euro players are soft” nonsense.
Two words in response to Euros are soft
Marian Hossa
Go ahead, tell him he was soft. Guy plays tough and physical, and is a HOF caliber forward, with the rings to match.
The White House said today that it won’t invite the NBA champs, but I imagine Trump can’t wait to buddy-up with NHL players. After all, a lot of them are Russian.
By sheer coincidence a lot of them are white also.
Putin is a personal friend of Ovi.
Amen brudda. I was going to Blackhawk games 12 years before the Caps were even a team. As long as I could walk under the turnstile I could sit on my dad’s lap for free. Don’t be telling us about the regard in which we hold our local puck heads.
I’m just going to assume the narrative for ‘team that can’t win the big game’ will shift to the Blues now. I mean, they’ve been at it longer than the Caps have, and they can’t get out of their own way, but not sure what other team would earn that mantle. The Maple Leafs, maybe, but they at least have a few Cups from before the expansions began.