Washington Capitals

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 139.142.63.184 (talk) at 18:32, 19 June 2007 (→‎2007 Offseason). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Washington Capitals
File:Washington Capitals.gif
ConferenceEastern
DivisionSoutheast
Founded1974
HistoryWashington Capitals
1974 - present
Home arenaVerizon Center
CityWashington, D.C.
Team colorsBlack, Blue, and Bronze (to be red, white and blue in 2007-08)
MediaComcast SportsNet
News Channel 8
WTEM (980 AM)
Owner(s)United States Ted Leonsis
General managerCanada George McPhee
Head coachCanada Glen Hanlon
CaptainUnited States Chris Clark
Minor league affiliatesHershey Bears (AHL)
South Carolina Stingrays (ECHL)
Stanley CupsNone
Conference championships1997-98
Division championships1988-89, 1999-00, 2000-01

The Washington Capitals are a professional ice hockey team based in Washington, D.C.. They are members of the Southeast Division of the Eastern Conference of the National Hockey League (NHL).

Early History

File:WSH 284.gif
The original Capitals logo, used from 1974-95.

Along with the Kansas City Scouts, the Capitals joined the National Hockey League as an expansion team for the 1974-75 season. The team was owned by Abe Pollin, owner of the NBA's Washington Wizards. Pollin had built the Capital Centre in suburban Landover, Maryland, to house both the Wizards (who formerly played in Baltimore) and the Capitals. His first act as owner was to hire Hall of Famer Milt Schmidt as general manager.

With a combined 30 teams between the NHL and the rival World Hockey Association, the Capitals had few players with professional experience and were at a disadvantage against the long-standing teams that were stocked with more experienced players. Like the other three teams who joined the league during the WHA era – the Scouts, Atlanta Flames and New York Islanders – the Capitals did not factor the arrival of the WHA into their plans.

The Capitals' inaugural season was dreadful, even by expansion standards. They finished 8-67-5, far and away the worst record in the league. Their 21 points were half that of their expansion brethren, the Scouts. They won only eight games, the fewest ever by a team playing at least 70 games. Their .131 winning percentage is still the worst in NHL history. They also set records for most road losses (39 out of 40), most consecutive road losses (37) and most consecutive losses (17), most of which have now been broken. Schmidt himself had to take over the coaching reins late in the season.

In 1975-76, Washington went 25 straight games without a win and allowed 394 goals en route to another horrendous record – 11-59-10 (32 points). For the rest of the 1970s and early 1980s, the Capitals alternated between dreadful seasons and finishing only a few points out of the playoffs. In 1980 and 1981, for instance, they were in playoff contention until the last day of the season. By the summer of 1982, there was serious talk of the team moving out of the U.S. capital, and a "Save the Caps" campaign was underway. Then two significant events took place to solve the problem.

Playoffs

First, the team hired David Poile as General Manager. Second, as his first move, Poile pulled off one of the biggest trades in franchise history on September 9, 1982, when he dealt longtime regulars Ryan Walter and Rick Green to the Montreal Canadiens for Rod Langway, Brian Engblom, Doug Jarvis, and Craig Laughlin. This move turned the franchise around, as Langway's solid defense helped the team to dramatically reduce its goals-against, and the explosive goal-scoring of Dennis Maruk, Mike Gartner, and Bobby Carpenter fueled the offensive attack. The result was a 29-point jump, a third-place finish in the powerful Patrick Division, and the team's first playoff appearance in 1983. Although they were swept by the three-time-defending Stanley Cup Champion New York Islanders, the Caps' dramatic turnaround ended any talk of the club leaving Washington.

The Capitals would make the playoffs for each of the next 14 years in a row. They became known for starting slow before catching fire in January and February. However, regular-season success did not carry into the playoffs. Despite a continuous march of stars like Gartner, Carpenter, Langway, Bengt-Ake Gustafsson, Mike Ridley, Dave Christian, Dino Ciccarelli, Larry Murphy, and Kevin Hatcher, Washington was knocked out in either the first or second round eight years in a row. In 1985-86, for instance, the Caps finished with 107 points (a franchise record that still stands today) and won 50 games for the only time in franchise history, good enough for the fourth-best record in the league. However, they were bounced out of the playoffs in the second round by the New York Rangers.

The next season brought even more heartbreak, with a loss to the Islanders in the Patrick Division Semifinal. This series was capped off by the classic Easter Epic game, which ended at 1:56 am on Easter Sunday 1987. The Capitals had thoroughly dominated most of the game, outshooting the Islanders 75-52, but lost in overtime when goaltender Bob Mason was beaten on a Pat LaFontaine shot from the blue line. The Capitals finally made the Wales Conference Finals in 1990, but went down in a four-game sweep at the hands of the first-place Boston Bruins. Gartner had been traded to the Minnesota North Stars in 1989.

Lost chances

By the mid-1990s, the Stanley Cup seemed to elude the Capitals. Despite having rising stars in right-winger Peter Bondra, defenseman Sergei Gonchar, and center/left-wing Joe Juneau, the team's core players were mostly aging.

The Capitals were favourites during the 1993 playoff series with the New York Islanders but they were upset in six games. That series was most remembered when team captain and enforcer Dale Hunter checked the Isles' Pierre Turgeon from behind in Game 6 AFTER Turgeon scored a goal. Turgeon fell awkwardly onto the ice and suffered a separated shoulder. Although Turgeon was not seriously injured, Hunter's post-goal check earned him a suspension for the first 21 games of the next season--at the time, the longest suspension for an on-ice incident in NHL history. Hunter had otherwise been the team's best player in that series with eight postseason goals.

Eastern Conference Champions

Then in 1998, Peter Bondra's 52 goals led the team, veterans Hunter, Juneau and Adam Oates returned to old form, and Olaf Kolzig had a solid .920 save percentage as the Caps got past the Boston Bruins, Ottawa Senators, and Buffalo Sabres (the latter on a dramatic overtime win in game six on a goal by Joe Juneau) en route to the team's first (and to date, only) Stanley Cup finals appearance. The Capitals won six overtime games, three in each of their series against the Bruins and Sabres. However, the team was no match for the defending champs, the Detroit Red Wings, who won in a four-game sweep.

That same season, Oates, Phil Housley, and Dale Hunter, all scored their 1,000th career point, the only time in NHL history that one team had 3 different players reach that same milestone in a single season.

Dissapointments and Rebuilding

In 1999, the Capitals missed the playoffs due to numerous injuries, one of the highest in the league that season. They went on to win back-to-back Southeast Division titles in 2000 and 2001, yet both years lost in the first round to the Pittsburgh Penguins. After the 2000-01 season, Adam Oates demanded a trade but management refused and stripped him of his team captaincy.

In the summer of 2001, the Capitals landing five-time Art Ross Trophy winner Jaromir Jagr, one of the best players in the NHL in the 1990s, by trading three young prospects to the Pittsburgh Penguins. Jagr was signed to the largest contract ever in NHL history - $77 million over 7 years at an average salary of $11 million per year, with an option for an eighth year. That's over $134,000 per game. However, Jagr did not live up to expectations, as the Capitals failed to defend their division title and missed the playoffs in 2002.

In the summer of 2002, the Caps made even more roster changes, including the signing the highly regarded Robert Lang as a free agent, a linemate of Jagr's from Pittsburgh. The Capitals were back in the playoffs 2003, but disappointed fans again by losing in six games to the Tampa Bay Lightning after starting off with a two-game lead in the best-of-seven first-round series. The series is well-remembered for the three-overtime Game 6 at the then-MCI Center, the longest game in the building's history, which was eventually decided by a power play goal as a result of Jason Doig skating on the ice too early and warranting a too-many-men-on-the-ice penalty.

In the 2003-2004 season, the Caps unloaded a lot of their high-priced talent in order to save money — not just a cost-cutting spree, but also an acknowledgment that their attempt to build a contender with high-priced veteran talent had failed. Jagr had failed to finish among the league's top scorers or make the postseason All-Star Team during his time with the Capitals. They tried to trade Jagr, but as only one year was left on the existing Collective Bargaining Agreement before it expired, few teams were willing to risk $11 million on an underperforming player. In 2004, Jagr was finally sent to the New York Rangers for Anson Carter and an agreement that Washington would pay approximately four million dollars per year of Jagr's salary, with Jagr himself agreeing to defer (with interest) $1 million per year for the remainder of his contract to allow the trade to go ahead. This was quickly followed by Bondra going to the Ottawa Senators. Not long after, Robert Lang was sent to Detroit and Gonchar to the Bruins. The Robert Lang trade marked the first time in the history of the National Hockey League that the league's leading scorer was traded in the middle of the season. The Capitals ended the year 23-46-10-6, tied for the second worst record, along with the Chicago Blackhawks.

File:Washington-alternate.gif
Washington's Home logo; two hockey sticks crossed behind the image of the United States Capitol, with stars flanking it, a hockey puck at the front, and the team's name emblazoned across the Capitol.

In the 2004 NHL Entry Draft, the Capitals won the Draft Lottery, and selected Alexander Ovechkin first overall. During the NHL labor dispute of 2004-05, which cost the NHL its entire season, Ovechkin stayed in Russia, playing for Moscow Dynamo. Several other Capitals played part or all of the lost season in Europe, including Olaf Kolzig, Brendan Witt, and Jeff Halpern. The Capitals' 2005 off-season consisted of making D.C.-area native Halpern the team's captain, signing Andrew Cassels, Ben Clymer, Mathieu Biron and Jamie Heward, and acquiring Chris Clark and Jeff Friesen via trade.

Post-Lockout

The Capitals finished the 2005-2006 NHL season in the cellar of the Southeastern Division again, with a 29-41-12 campaign, having 12 more points then the 2003-04 Season, good for 27th out of the 30 NHL teams. Yet the team played close in every game, playing in 42 one-goal games, although losing 2/3 of those games. Ovechkin's rookie season exceeded the hype, as he led all 2005-06 NHL rookies in goals, points, power-play goals and shots. He finished third overall in the NHL in scoring and tied for third in goals; and his 425 shots not only led the league, but also set an NHL rookie record and was the fourth-highest total in NHL history. Ovechkin's rookie point total was the second-best in Washington Capitals history, and his goal total was tied for third in franchise history. Ovechkin won the Calder Memorial Trophy, beating out Pittsburgh center Sidney Crosby and Calgary Flames defenseman Dion Phaneuf. Many longtime Capitals had career years, with Dainius Zubrus netting 57 points, Halpern having a career-best 33 assists, Matt Pettinger putting in a career-best 20-goal, 38-point effort and seven others on the relatively young team topping 20 points for the first time. Two notable landmarks were also hit by Capitals, as the team's longest tenured Capital, Olaf Kolzig, won his 250th game in goal and Andrew Cassels became the 204th player to play 1,000 games, although he did not finish out his season with the team. A notable first was that Washington area native Jeff Halpern was named captain of the hometown Capitals. At the 2006 trade deadline, March 8, Witt was traded to Nashville.

2006-2007 Season

In the 2006 offseason, Halpern left the Capitals to join the Dallas Stars; Chris Clark became the Capitals' new captain. Richard Zednik returned to the Capitals in 2006-07 after a disappointing 16-goal, 14-assist season in 2005-06 with Montreal, but was later dealt at the trade deadline to the New York Islanders after a disappointing and injury plagued season; the Caps also signed former Philadelphia Flyers enforcer Donald Brashear.

Yet the Capitals finished with the same point total (70) in 2006-2007 as they did the year before, although they won one less game. Alexander Ovechkin was the Capitals' lone representative in the All-Star game. The year was also notable for Alexander Semin's breakout, who notched 38 goals in only his 2nd NHL season.

2007 Offseason

The Capitals will unveil new uniforms on June 22, 2007. The teams colors will become red, white and blue again for the first time since 1995.[1]

Signed Nicklas Backstrom, the fouth overall pick in the 2006 NHL Entry Draft, to three-year entry-level contract.

Apparently, if you go to the Washington Capitals website, by clicking here, you must press on the graphic on the page and then right click the option 'Forward'. This will create an animation of the person taking off the old Capitals jersey and putting on the new one.

If you cannot find the picture, there is a still image here.

Season-by-season record

This is a partial list of the last five seasons completed by the Capitals. For the full season-by-season history, see Washington Capitals seasons

Note: GP = Games played, W = Wins, L = Losses, T = Ties, OTL = Overtime Losses/SOL = Shootout Losses, Pts = Points, GF = Goals for, GA = Goals against, PIM = Penalties in minutes

Records as of March 9, 2007. [2]

Season GP W L T OTL Pts GF GA PIM Finish Playoffs
2001-02 82 36 33 11 2 85 228 240 1043 2nd, Southeast Did not qualify
2002-03 82 39 29 8 6 92 224 220 1268 2nd, Southeast Lost in Conference Quarterfinals, 2-4 (Lightning)
2003-04 82 23 46 10 3 59 186 253 1282 5th, Southeast Did not qualify
2004-05 Season cancelled due to 2004-05 NHL Lockout
2005-061 82 29 41 — 12 70 237 306 1426 5th, Southeast Did not qualify
2006-07 82 28 40 — 14 70 235 286 1205 5th, Southeast Did not qualify
Totals 2481 1043 1105 303 29 2418 7903 8331 43561 — —
1 As of the 2005-06 NHL season, all games will have a winner; the OTL column includes SOL (Shootout losses).

Notable players

Current roster

As of April 7, 2007. [1]

Goaltenders
# Player Catches Acquired Place of Birth
1 United States Brent Johnson L 2005 Farmington, Michigan
35 Canada Frederic Cassivi L 2005 Sorel, Quebec
37 Germany Olaf Kolzig L 1989 Johannesburg, South Africa
Defensemen
# Player Shoots Acquired Place of Birth
2 United States Brian Pothier R 2006 New Bedford, Massachusetts
4 Canada John Erskine (IR) L 2006 Kingston, Ontario
23 Slovakia Milan Jurcina L 2007 Liptovský Mikuláš, Czechoslovakia
26 Canada Shaone Morrisonn L 2004 Vancouver, British Columbia
44 Canada Steve Eminger R 2002 Woodbridge, Ontario
47 Canada Bryan Muir L 2005 Winnipeg, Manitoba
52 Canada Mike Green R 2004 Calgary, Alberta
Forwards
# Player Position Shoots Acquired Place of Birth
8 Russia Alexander Ovechkin - A LW R 2004 Moscow, U.S.S.R.
10 Canada Matt Bradley RW R 2005 Stittsville, Ontario
13 Czech Republic Jiri Novotny C R 2007 Pelhřimov, Czechoslovakia
14 Canada Eric Fehr RW R 2003 Winkler, Manitoba
15 Canada Boyd Gordon C R 2002 Unity, Saskatchewan
16 Canada Brian Sutherby - A (IR) C L 2000 Edmonton, Alberta
17 United States Chris Clark - C RW R 2005 South Windsor, Connecticut
18 Canada Matt Pettinger LW L 2000 Edmonton, Alberta
21 Canada Brooks Laich C L 2004 Wawota, Saskatchewan
24 Canada Kris Beech C L 2006 Salmon Arm, British Columbia
25 United States Dave Steckel C L 2005 West Bend, Wisconsin
27 United States Ben Clymer LW R 2005 Bloomington, Minnesota
28 Russia Alexander Semin LW R 2002 Krasnoyarsk, U.S.S.R.
38 Czech Republic Jakub Klepis C R 2004 Prague, Czechoslovakia
43 Czech Republic Tomas Fleischmann LW L 2004 Koprivnice, Czechoslovakia
87 United States Donald Brashear LW L 2006 Bedford, Indiana

Team captains


Honored Members

Retired Numbers: The Capitals have retired three numbers. Defenseman Yvon Labre's number 7 was retired in 1980, during the last season of the career of this original Capital. In 1997, the Capitals retired the number 5 of defenseman Rod Langway, and center Dale Hunter's number 32 was raised in 2000. The Capitals also honor the leaguewide retirement of Wayne Gretzky's 99.

Hall of Famers: The Capitals have three former players in the Hockey Hall of Fame. Right wing Mike Gartner was the first to be inducted, in 2001, after a long NHL career that included ten years (1979-89) with the Caps. A year later, defenseman Rod Langway (1982-93 with Washington) joined Gartner, and in 2004, defenseman Larry Murphy (1984-89) was selected. In addition, Langway and former team owner Abe Pollin are honored in the Washington Hall of Stars, a series of banners honoring D.C. sports figures on the right-field wall at Robert F. Kennedy Stadium.

First-round draft picks


Franchise scoring leaders

These are the top-ten point-scorers in franchise history. Figures are updated after each completed NHL regular season.

Note: Pos = Position; GP = Games Played; G = Goals; A = Assists; Pts = Points; P/G = Points per game; * = current Capitals player

Player Pos GP G A Pts P/G
Peter Bondra RW 961 472 353 825 .86
Mike Gartner RW 758 397 392 789 1.04
Michal Pivonka C 825 181 418 599 .73
Dale Hunter C 872 181 375 556 .64
Bengt-Ake Gustafsson RW 629 196 359 555 .88
Mike Ridley C 588 218 329 547 .93
Calle Johansson D 983 113 361 474 .48
Dennis Maruk C 343 182 249 431 1.26
Scott Stevens D 601 98 331 429 .71
Kevin Hatcher D 685 149 277 426 .62

NHL awards and trophies


Franchise individual records


References

  1. ^ http://www.washingtoncaps.com/news/news.asp?story_id=4783
  2. ^ Hockeydb.com, Washington Capitals season statistics and records.

See also

External links

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Washington_Capitals&oldid=139254682"