Written by Barry Svrluga at Washington Post.com
“I don’t know if we’ve done anything to get any attention,” Caps Coach Barry Trotz said.
No longer true. Now, after a stretch in which they have gone 11-2-2, Tortorella’s right: Oh, they’re comin’.
“Maybe we are laying in the weeds a little bit,” veteran forward Justin Williams said. “No one’s really talking about us.”
No longer. This was an occasion at a time of year when hockey needs occasions to get noticed. The NFL playoffs are starting. The college football bowl season just ended, with the title game still to come. The Winter Classic, which even hockey purists feel has lost some luster, has passed.
So all of hockey could embrace something like Columbus’s 16-game winning streak, one short of the mark set by the 1992-93 Pittsburgh Penguins, a remarkable achievement in a sport in which games can be decided by whether a three-inch puck glances off the inside or the outside of a 2⅜ -inch metal post.
But Thursday, that achievement ended in a thrashing, and the Caps will deservedly gain leaguewide attention for it. They hadn’t been, early in the season, their Presidents’ Trophy selves from a year ago. But they pulled within five points of league-best Columbus in the absolutely stacked Metropolitan Division. And all that on a night when the league’s focus was on, of all teams, the Blue Jackets.
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