By Jason La Canfora
Friday, April 18, 2008

PHILADELPHIA

There is no substitute for experience, they say. The Washington Capitals are living proof.

The franchise has come oh-so-far this season, from NHL afterthought to the toast of the league entering the playoffs, and perhaps years from now, this series with the Philadelphia Flyers will be remembered as the springboard for greater things, providing essential lessons in the rigors of postseason hockey.

But as the Capitals trudged off the Wachovia Center ice tonight, 4-3 losers in double overtime, the pain of the present was all these 20-somethings could consider. They had lived and died over and over again for four hours, and now they trailed three games to one in this best-of-seven first-round series with the rowdy Philadelphia Flyers. Their hurt was compounded by how hard they had fought, overcoming what could have been a crippling first period, roaring back to take a 3-2 lead into the third period, only to be eventually undone by more youthful mistakes, needing a win Saturday at Verizon Center to extend this magical season.

"We made two or three more mistakes than we should make, but I thought we deserved better tonight," said Coach Bruce Boudreau, who made no postgame remarks to his players, knowing nothing could assuage them. He knew well enough many of them were already stewing with regret.

Likely MVP Alex Ovechkin, the league's premier marksman in the regular season, missed a gaping net with 13 minutes to play in the third, the puck skipping unpredictably. With less than 10 minutes left, the Capitals were caught with too many men on the ice for a second time in the game -- doing so even once is unforgivable in games this crucial, even with the din complicating communication on the bench.

"It was an unfortunate mistake," Boudreau said.

Series nemesis Daniel Brière tied the contest on the ensuing power play (his fifth goal in four games), and the Capitals gutted out a stellar penalty kill in the final two minutes of regulation, despite Boyd Gordon, Brooks Laich and Tom Poti being ravaged by fatigue, stuck on the ice for nearly the entire two minutes.

The Capitals enjoyed the first great opportunity of overtime -- the game on the stick of former Stanley Cup winner Sergei Fedorov, his pedigree unparalleled on Washington's bench -- but Fedorov fired into goalie Martin Biron's arm. A minute later, a wild scramble around Biron came up empty, and a menacing series of passes at the end of the first overtime left the Flyers fretting but the Capitals scoreless.

Finally, Mike Knuble capped a series of Philadelphia near-misses by popping a loose puck over goalie Cristobal Huet with 13 minutes 20 seconds remaining in the second overtime, with Ovechkin adjacent, but unable to intervene.

"It was just one of those things," Gordon said. "In overtime, it can bounce either way."

Washington, staggering into this game after being outplayed in the first three contests, battled every bit as hard as the Flyers this time around, taking the play to them for most of the night, skating with more passion and displaying more hunger. Their young core looked up to the challenge, finally arriving on the grand stage, with Ovechkin, Nicklas Backstrom and Alexander Semin emerging from long slumbers (Backstrom and Semin each scored their first career postseason goal). Huet, whose sprawling, backhanded stop late in regulation was a thing of beautiful desperation, once again resembled a master shot-stopper.

They were chasing this game from the opening shift, and never could pull free.

The Capitals yielded a goal in the opening minute of play, triggered by a horrible turnover by defenseman Shaone Morrisonn -- whipping an already crazed crowd into a frothy boil -- and another in the final 90 seconds of the first period, a playoff sin. They faced four power plays in the first 20 minutes, including two five-on-three situations, and killed them all off -- including the game's first too-many-men penalty.

They turned over the puck with abandon throughout the first period, gifting it to the Flyers, living dangerously, still prone to some novice retaliatory penalties, but always somehow surviving, largely on guile and desire. It wasn't textbook, far from it, but an admirable display nonetheless.

"We were into it," Boudreau said.

Boudreau's tinkering with his lines and power-play personnel looked savvy, as the Capitals struck twice on the man advantage in the opening period, on well-placed shots by Semin and Backstrom, and they withstood their misdeeds, tied at 2 after 20 minutes.

"We lost, but it was a pretty positive game for us," defenseman Steve Eminger said. "It was the hardest we've battled. If we can do that again, we're going to do well."

The second period might have been Washington's most sound of the series. The Capitals made pragmatic decisions with the puck, kept the Flyers away from the net and seemed more poised and at ease with the task at hand. The least-likely goal scorer stepped forward nearly six minutes into the period, and for quite some time, Eminger, a longtime pariah, appeared to be the hero.

But such a story line would be too sanguine an outcome for this franchise. Except for a miracle run to the finals in 1998, Washington's postseasons are heartbreak city. Rallying for three straight victories likely is too much to ask, too, but even in cold defeat this feels much more like a beginning than an end, a fresh-faced group experiencing growing pains en masse.

Thursday night's effort left the Capitals just short of a series-altering victory, but that much closer to fully grasping all that playoff hockey encompasses.