By Mike Wise
Friday, April 18, 2008
PHILADELPHIA
The light went on Thursday night, and we're not talking about the light lit by Mike Knuble to end this wild scrum of a Stanley Cup playoff game that sent the Capitals back to Washington -- maybe for the season.
The light that makes young, star-struck skaters understand their purpose in the postseason, the pilot light that becomes a flame, was ignited in Alexander Semin and Nicklas Backstrom.
And Alex Ovechkin, who set up camp in the harsh environment of the crease rather than play the waiting game on the perimeter.
But the hard question is this: Was it too late?
Viktor Kozlov, without a playoff goal now in 18 postseason games, was braver and better. Cristobal Huet sprawled and flailed until the resilient Flyers and the foaming fans did him and the Capitals in, a 4-3 double overtime thriller, remembered as much for its relentless forechecking as its pulse-checking drama.
But here's the real rub for Washington: Had the Capitals given the resilient performance they gave in Game 4 here two nights ago in Game 3 or four days ago in Game 2, this series is squared at two games and home ice is still theirs.
Instead, they play for their season at home on Saturday against the first team to slap them with a three-game losing streak since, yes, November.
Two well-muscled statistics dropped the gloves Thursday night, trading blows into the second overtime. The Flyers had not lost a home game in front of these impossibly loud lungs in five weeks, dating from mid-March. The Capitals had never lost three games in a row under Coach Bruce Boudreau since he took over for Glen Hanlon in November.
Who would go down?
The sawed-off coach and his playoff newbies, most of them late of the Hershey Bears, who stood their ground on Thursday night at Wachovia Center, repelling the Flyers as best as they could for most of three periods, taking this thriller past regulation.
Or home ice, the invincibility the Flyers have found in their love-'em-or-loathe-'em city, where the real-life Vince Papale, not Marky Mark, shows up with his son in orange and black?
Philly's phanatics and their street-tough Flyers flat-out TKO'd the nice, little tale about the minor league coach whose team made it big. Yes, the series may have turned decidedly toward Philly on Thursday, but all was not lost for Washington.
Underneath the Flyers players' names, Boudreau had written one word on the chalkboard this morning in the visitors' locker room: resiliency.
If the Caps take nothing away from this loss, they leave Philadelphia with the notion that their hearts are finally beating as furiously as the Flyers and their passionate fans.
From the moment Semin squared off with Daniel Brière in the opening minutes -- placid Alexander Semin! -- Game 4 was on.
The Caps hadn't made the playoffs since 2003, but it might have taken them three games to become a real playoff team. They mixed it up, they put the puck on net instead of passing it around, and, most important, they finally took the hard step forward rather than the artful step sideways.
The energy was infectious, the tension palpable. The tone was set by the kiddie corps early, the 20-something crowd who apparently got tired of being told, "They're kids; they don't know what the Stanley Cup playoffs are about yet."
Backstrom, who never met a barbell he liked, almost went toe-to-toe with Brière during that scrum in the opening minutes. A snowflake in the series up to Game 4, the sedentary Swede was suddenly charged. He scored his first playoff goal moments later.
Same with Semin, who started the little brouhaha and then guided home a power-play rocket just left of the net. He met aggression with aggression each time the Flyers tried to rattle him.
Ovechkin became an ornery chap, too. He camped in front of the crease as if he were the injured Chris Clark, whose work outside the net the Caps have missed the past week. After his first assist Ovechkin glared at the fans, almost mocking their anger. His checks were meaningful, menacing.
All ethnocentric bashing, whispered in the press box and beyond all week, ceased.
The tired cliches about Europeans being soft skaters, unprepared to handle the physical and mental grind of April the way good, old Canadian farm boys do, went out the window in the first 20 minutes. For the first time in four games, the postseason neophytes were finally making the Flyers' hit men pay for their crimes.
This was Evgeni Plushenko skating out to center ice, throwing a haymaker, re-cocking his fist and then asking, "Ya' want a fresh one?"
But they also learned another hard playoff lesson: Sometimes in the postseason, when you take a punch and throw your best one, you still end up on the short end.
Whether the Caps' newfound purpose and desire can be parlayed into a Game 5 victory remains to be seen. Entering Game 4, the notion of a loss turned thoughts to a sentimental -- and slightly strategic -- thought:
Why not give Olie Kolzig a going-away gift for two decades of service in the net? Why not start Kolzig, the former face of the franchise, in what very well could be his last game as a Capital?
But then, as Huet kept turning away shots -- including an amazing, diving, back-handed flail with 10:53 left in regulation -- well, this is no time for sentiment. This is about survival.
And like many of the other Caps on the ice Thursday, Huet deserves to try and prolong the season, to see if the light remains on or merely serves as a reminder of what might have been if the switch had been flicked on earlier.
View all comments that have been posted about this article.