Written by Dan Steinberg at WashingtonPost.com
These Washington Capitals were different. Now their playoff results would be, too. Down three goals to the league’s hottest team, an ordinary Washington outfit might have wilted and gone away. These Capitals somehow rallied Tuesday night, riding a clutch veteran and a miracle wave of power plays into overtime.
Obituaries were erased. Jokes were deleted. Comparisons to the past were ripped up. This, finally, was The One, the group that would redeem all those previous failures.
Until it wasn’t. Nick Bonino gathered a rebound and deposited it into the net, and gold T-shirts poured onto the ice, and somehow it had happened again. Washington’s 4-3 overtime loss ended perhaps the best season in franchise history in a horribly familiar spot: the second round, and the middle of May.
The final night was a three-hour palpitation, Washington’s lifeless corpse suddenly alive again and dancing a jig on the ice. This was everything the Caps had told us to expect: that they were resilient and calm, that they played their best in the most uncomfortable predicaments, that they refused to go away. They were the league’s best third-period team, with too much leadership to falter.
And they provided one final thrill, in a third period still hard to believe. The Capitals scored three straight goals in the final 22 minutes of regulation, aided by three consecutive delay of game calls against Pittsburgh. They survived early in overtime when Jay Beagle flung himself in front of an open net. They had enough momentum to skate through a wall, and victory in Game 7 would have been a formality.
Instead, misery. The only comfort? At least it wasn’t a Game 7.
That rally might change the way this team will be remembered; this was no season-ending rout to the Rangers or the Penguins, a possibility that was on the table early Tuesday night. But when the frenzy settles down, there will be questions. Especially this one: why didn’t we see the team that rallied to tie that game three hours earlier? Why didn’t we see it throughout the playoffs?
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