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Washington Capitals Mailbag: All-Time Favorite Caps
Our next question comes from Eric from Ocean City!
"Put together your all-time favorite Caps team. To clarify, that’s a team composed of your favorite Washington Capitals players that you have watched."
That I have watched? Oh, this should be fun. Disclaimer: this isn’t stats related at all, it’s just my 12 favorite forwards, six favorite defensemen and two favorite goalies.
Alex Ovechkin, Nicklas Backstrom and Mike Knuble would form the first line. I absolutely loved that first line. Knuble was the hard-nosed guy that I swore was going to take the Washington Capitals to the Stanley Cup. He didn’t wind up doing that, but going to his 1000th career NHL game more than made up for it. That’s an experience that I’ll never forget.
Peter Bondra, Evgeny Kuznetsov and Alexander Semin would form the second line. Bondra’s the reason that I fell in love with hockey. Every time I was on a team, I wanted to wear his number. The Caps haven’t had too many good centers since I’ve been watching them, so Kuznetsov gets the nod. Semin, I don’t care what anyone else says, he was the best. So much fun to root for and such an exciting player.
Eric Fehr, Dale Hunter and Troy Brouwer would make up the checking line. No explanation needed. The fourth line would consist of Sergei Fedorov, Jeff Halpern and Joel Ward. I’m 95% sure that Fedorov and Halpern could play in the NHL right now and still be in the black as far as possession. I’d love to see Fedorov’s possession numbers during his prime. Sadly, Corsi and Fenwick only started being calculated officially during the last part of his career. Willing to bet he’d be Patrice Bergeron-esque.
Now for the pairings. First pairing would be Scott Stevens (saw him play for the Devils so he counts) and Mike Green. Stevens would actually protect Green and mess up anyone who looked at him the wrong way. Green, well, everyone knows how much I love Mike Green. The second pairing would be Karl Alzner and John Carlson. They should have never been separated in the first place. The third pairing would consist of Sergei Gonchar and Sylvain Cote.
My two goalies would be Braden Holtby and Olaf Kolzig.