The Washington Capitals are the 2018 Stanley Cup Champions. How did this team manage to beat the unbeatable Vegas Golden Knights?
The 2017-2018 Vegas Golden Knights will go down as the greatest NHL expansion team of all time. In the entire playoffs, they only lost three games. They made quick work of teams that seemed to be unbeatable like the Winnipeg Jets in five games. So it’s a bit ironic the Knights lost to the worst expansion team ever, the Washington Capitals.
Heading into the Stanley Cup Finals, everybody was conflicted about who was going to win because the Golden Knights just couldn’t stop losing. And yet the Capitals beat them in just five games. How?
1. Holtbeast was on full display
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Hockey is a team sport, but everybody lives and dies by their goaltender. Capitals goaltender Braden Holtby had a shaky regular season, but quickly regained his Vezina-like play in the postseason and carried his team to the Cup.
During the Stanley Cup Playoffs, he posted a .922 save percentage and 2.16 goals against average. His play gave his teammates a longer leash because they knew that they could count on him to bail them out. Alex Ovechkin said it best after Game 2 – “Thank God he’s our goalie. I don’t know how to say it. It’s incredible.”
2. Soaring eagles and Russian machines
Before the start of the 2017-2018 season, the Capitals lost a lot of important players to free agency and the expansion draft. It was assumed that the team would be weaker, but as it turns out, the core they kept was just fine on their own.
Evgeny Kuznetsov lead his team in scoring in the playoffs with 32 points (12 goals and 20 assists) and Alexander Ovechkin continued to dominate the playoffs with 27 points (15 goals and 12 assists). Players who weren’t that prominent in the regular season emerged in the playoffs.
Case in point, Devante Smith-Pelly. In the Finals, he’s tied with Ovechkin for most goals on the team with three. His game-tying goal in game 5 is the biggest of his life and it gave his team the final push they needed to bring Lord Stanley home.
3. Specialty team is their specialty
Having arguably the greatest goal scorer in the history of the NHL on your powerplay is a great asset that Washington used to their full advantage against the Knights. In 16 powerplay chances, they capitalized on four of them (25 percent) with Ovechkin blasting home two of them.
For the penalty kill, they were 11 for 14 (79 percent). In the playoffs, the special teams are the difference between life and death. The Capitals totally owned both the powerplay and penalty kill and it is a huge reason why they are world champions.
Next: What the Hurricanes can learn from the Capitals
After 13 seasons of heartbreak, Ovechkin is finally a Stanley Cup Champion. After 43 years, the Washington Capitals have won their first ever Stanley Cup. The 2017-2018 NHL season was a wild ride filled with upsets and unlikely Cinderella stories and this capped off a magical season.