When the clock struck around 11:30 Wednesday night in D.C. the Cinderella carriage turned into a pumpkin. The Washington Capitals, the passengers, lost in overtime in Game 7 Wednesday night.
When another team touches the Stanley Cup this June, the Washington Capitals’ reign as Stanley Cup champions officially ends. Like we pointed the morning after, it’s okay Capitals fans. We will always have last year and nobody will take that away from us.
But when I think about the Capitals clinching the Stanley Cup in Vegas and thousands of people screaming around me in June back home in Washington, what comes to mind is how it shed a positive light and impacted many fans.
There was the fans who were there from the first day in 1974. There were fans that fell in love with the team during the playoff runs of the 80’s and 90’s. Then there’s the generation of all three of us writers here at Stars and Sticks. This special current era we have witnessed. All of these fans, young and old, got the feeling of being a Stanley Cup champion.
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With that feeling came a year of partying, pumping your chest and showing that swagger around your friends that your team won the ultimate prize.
That even included your Penguins friends who tortured you the previous two summers.
Sadly this wasn’t going to last forever. Somebody was waiting in the wings vying to take the Capitals down. That team was the Carolina Hurricanes who honestly played the better series and deserved the win.
Losing sucks. But last year’s experience will never be taken away. We each had our own struggles and turned to that Capitals run as a distraction. It also brought the city together in ways very few things could.
This June, somebody else will get that taste. Another team’s fan base will get that feeling of being on that other side. The thing about this other side, the winning side, the Stanley Cup side, is that while it’s small in terms of space, 31 teams vie for it but only one gets the slot.
As Capitals radio broadcaster John Walton said to conclude his sign-off after Game 7, “And know when that Cup is lifted in June by whatever team is next, remember what happened here and smile a little bit when you do.”
2019 is someone else’s year but 2018 will always be #CapsYear. The memories will be ingrained in our hearts forever. Let’s make 2020 #CapsYear Act Two: More Redemption.