As unbelievable as it may seem, we have now reached the moment: the five-year anniversary of the Capitals’ Stanley Cup win, the greatest moment in franchise history.
Hopefully you’ve enjoyed this journey back in time to that magical run – reliving every game, five years to the day from when it was first played, all leading up to this night. And don’t worry, we’ll have a few more moments to come as we look back at what was the start of an incredible summer!
Catch up on all of our “Five Years Ago Today…” recaps here.
The Series:
Stanley Cup Final – Capitals (1) vs. Golden Knights (1); Caps lead 3-1
The Setting:
June 7, 2018 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, NV
Game in a Nutshell:
It all came down to this. 15 wins in the books for the 2018 Washington Capitals, needing just one more to take home the ultimate trophy.
To get that one win, they’d have to get through a tough Vegas Golden Knights team – but perhaps the tougher task facing this team was getting past the past and out from under the weight of history.
See, 3-1 series leads have not exactly been kind to the Caps over the years. To put it mildly. In fact, no team in NHL history has gone up in a series 3-1 more times than the Caps (7)…and no team in NHL history has lost as many times as the Caps have when leading a series 3-1, holding the dubious distinction of five losses in those seven series.
Woof.
But this was a run of redemption, of erasing past mistakes and letting old wounds heal over – so it just sounds like there was one more demon left to exorcise this spring.
DC was ready and red-y for that exorcism:
Update: Still more than 90 minutes until actual hockey #ALLCAPS pic.twitter.com/34qjBkXP9s
— Noah Frank (@NoahAFrank) June 7, 2018
After a rollercoaster ride of a postseason, it was only fitting that Game 5 would have plenty of ups and downs – and boy howdy, did it ever.
Take the first period, for example. It, uh…happened. There were shots on goal and passes and hits and even a penalty. Twenty minutes came and went in a relatively quiet, some might even say nervous, start to the game. It was up-tempo, sure, and entertaining, both consistent with the way this whole series had been up to this point. But not much else to speak of in terms of actual events.
The second period? That’s when all hell broke loose.
A little over six minutes into the frame is where we start things off. Known sniper Deryk Engelland took a shot toward Braden Holtby that went off the back boards and bounced out to Evgeny Kuznetsov. Kuznetsov pushed the puck over to Tom Wilson, who had an eye on young Jakub Vrana streaking up ice. Vrana took a nice wrist shot, glove side high, and beat Marc-Andre Fleury for the first goal of the game.
The joy lasted about three minutes before former Cap and human ray of sunshine Nate Schmidt put a seemingly innocuous shot at the net – but as we know, it’s those seemingly innocuous shots you’ve got to watch out for. Apparently Matt Niskanen didn’t know that, because it deflected off his skate and into the net. Whoopsies. Tie game.
The teams headed to center ice after the goal, the puck dropped, and off the faceoff, Alex Ovechkin broke in on net before being unceremoniously tripped up by Engelland (although he managed to still get his shot on goal while falling, as is his specialty). Caps to the power play.
About 30 seconds later, the Vegas PA announcer still reading out the names from the Knights’ first goal, the Caps struck again. Fittingly in this huge moment, it was the classic combination of Backstrom to Ovechkin in his office for the goal to put the Caps on top.
Things were going great.
Oh, but that rollercoaster ride ain’t done yet. About three minutes later, a battle in front of the net between Christian Djoos and David Perron sent Braden Holtby to the ice at a most unfortunate time – and despite the Caps challenging for goalie interference, Vegas had tied things up.
In the dying minutes of a wild middle frame, it was Ovechkin’s turn to trip someone up, hauling down William Karlsson. A scramble around the net, which included Holtby getting completely lost in his crease (we’ll forgive you, big guy), resulted in a wide-open net. Waiting there was, of course, Reilly Smith, who collected a pass from Alex Tuch to put the Knights on top.
A fracas ensued in the aftermath, sending a quartet of players to the locker rooms a little earlier than planned for matching roughing minors – and we were headed to the third with Vegas up by one.
The third period started with all the momentum on the Vegas side, and they registered a couple of high-quality chances early in the frame as they tried to pad their lead. Thankfully, Holtby was there to take care of business.
Ah, and then, kids…friends…babes…things were about to get so, SO good.
Fast-forward to around the halfway mark of the third period. Caps still down by one, the team’s fourth line took the ice, joined by Brooks Orpik and Djoos. Devante Smith-Pelly, hero of the last two games, started the forecheck behind the Vegas net. The puck made its way back to the red line, but Orpik held it in, sending it back to the front of the net, where DSP was lurking. Pulling off his best Ovechkin impression, DSP was sent sprawling to the ice…but not before tucking the puck in past Marc-Andre Fleury.
Tie. Game. Baby.
But wait, there’s more!
Less than three minutes later (what was it with these guys and increments of three on this night?), history was made.
The play started out rather simply. Michal Kempny dumped the puck in behind the net, sending Vegas’s Luca Sbisa in to collect it. Then Sbisa made a play that I’m sure he’s been reliving in his nightmares ever since, fumbling the pass attempt and putting it directly on the stick of a waiting Andre Burakovsky. Burakovsky found Brett Connolly between the circles, and Connolly did exactly what you’re supposed to do: he put the puck on net. Fleury made the initial save, but then seemed to lose track of it.
And Lars Eller? He found it.
…let’s just watch this together, shall we?
Instantly iconic. And the red was rockin’ back in DC.
Get that thing polished up real purty now, Phil.
Of course, once the Caps took the lead, the real stress began – because there were still a little over seven minutes remaining in regulation. There was still a lot of game left. And nothing’s over until the final horn sounds, and the clock hits zero.
Yeah, but about that clock…let’s fast-forward again, to 1:49 remaining in regulation. Boy, that’s a very specific time. Why is that time important?
BECAUSE THAT IS WHEN TIME STOPPED.
Yes, folks, in true Capitals fashion, something good was about to happen and instead of letting it happen, the hockey gods literally stopped time.
…or it was just something wonky with the in-house timekeeping. YMMV. Whatever the situation, the clock decided to take no notice of our collective elevated heart rates and go on a little jaunt just to mess with every single one of us (to say nothing of the poor Caps’ players). And quite a jaunt it was, too: first freezing at 1:49, then jumping up, inexplicably, to 15:19, freezing again at 15:18, dropping down to 14.9 and staying there, then stopping at 12.8…then up to 1:00, where it stayed for another lengthy stretch before finally close to the correct time.
If you feel like watching it, and you’ve taken your blood pressure medication, the whole thing plays out here:
(Honestly if you were able to breathe while the clock wigged out and froze and wigged out again, I’m not sure we can be friends, because that was just an absolute no-oxygen-allowed-in-or-out scenario over here.)
And of course in the middle of the “how the hell much time is left??” chaos, Nicklas Backstrom took aim at the now-empty net at the Vegas end, and just missed, because we needed more butt-clenching. The drama, Nicklas. The drama.
Finally we got to the final 10-15 seconds of regulation, and even then we all had to wait as Eller cleared the puck, missing the empty net but nailing the icing, and Vegas touched up with 0.6 seconds left.
The drama, Lars. THE DRAMA.
They would double-check the clock to make sure it was accurate (lol), and it was. The faceoff came back to the Caps’ end. 0.6 seconds separating them from glory.
What happens next?? Tune in to Part 2 later today to see the end!