End of Season

Two thoughts on the end of another NHL season: one, I have officially adopted the Washington Capitals as my team for the 2008 Stanley Cup playoffs; and two, why isn’t more being written about possibly the end of Trevor Linden‘s career in the National Hockey League?

With my beloved Leafs now banished to the virtual corner, dunce hats firmly in place on their pointly little blue and white heads until summer’s end, I have decided to adopt a foster child rooting interest. For just pennies a day, I will be cheering on Alex Ovechkin and the Capitals, who are now this year’s Southeast division champs (which is a little like being declared the tallest jockey in Kentucky). The Caps have a lot to offer to the interested Leaf fan, it seems to me: they are not a divisional rival, so itinerant Leaf fans need not be accused of fickle capriciousness. Speaking historically, the Washington franchise has been mostly a laughable bunch of sad sacks (the ’75 Capitals basically set the Gold Standard for single-season NHL futility, winning a grand total of 8 of their 80 games that year, all of which makes them easy to identify with for frustrated Leafs fans. In addition, of course, they happen to have quite possibly the greatest player in the league right now on their roster – Alex Ovechkin. This guy does it all: he scores more goals than anyone else in the league, and he has been involved in something like more than 40% of all the goals the Capitals have scored this season. He also throws about as many hits as anyone else in the league, and he does it cleanly – racking up only 38 minutes in penalties all year. To top it all off, the guy just seems to love playing the game – he plays with an obvious enthusiasm, and Ovie flashes that jack o’lantern smile and essentially does an on-ice version of the Funky Chicken whenever he scores, whenever the Caps win, or whenever he happens to remember that he just recently signed a $124 million dollar contract.

I was very much hoping that the stars would align so that Washington and Montreal would meet in the first round, but that is not to be; the Habs have a date with the Bruins in round number one as of the end of their workmanlike drubbing of my Leafs. The Caps have been one of the hottest teams in the league since Bruce Boudreau took over as their coach, and they’ve been absolutely on fire during the charge down the stretch to their Southeast Division championship, and I think Cristobal Huet probably has it in the back of his mind to prove a thing or two to Habs management about their decision earlier this year to let him go for a bag of pucks at the trade deadline.

The matchups aren’t completely set yet, and won’t be until after Pittsburgh’s game tomorrow, but as I understand it there is a chance that Washington will instead play Ottawa in the first round. This would be a nice matchup for Leafs fans; Ottawa has charged down the home stretch essentially like Clint Bowyer finished last year’s Daytona 500: upside down, backwards and on fire, whereas the Caps have just refused to lose. Since neither my Leafs nor the Carolina Panthers – who only had to beat the woeful Carolina Panthers fer Chrissake – could put a stake through the heart of the Senators and their fans, I have full confidence that the Caps can and will do it if this series comes to pass.

Tonight marks the end of the season for the Vancouver Canucks, who won’t be participating in the playoffs, which means that it’s possibly the last game of a great career for their captain Trevor Linden. This guy has been a class act throughout a 20-year career, and a truly great player. He and the rest of the Medicine Hat Tigers broke my heart twenty years ago when they beat my beloved Windsor Spitfires in the Memorial Cup championship game – it was a crushing loss, because Windsor had gone undefeated in the OHL playoffs and won 35 of their last 36 games. Trevor and his buddies picked a hell of a time to end that streak for us, and – if I recall correctly – they did it with a third period comeback, too. Six years later, Linden was the captain of a tremendous Canucks team that went seven games in a classic final with the New York Rangers, losing to Mark Messier and Mike Richter in a stirring battle.

Linden seems like he’s kind of a low-key guy. I know he’s been involved a lot in the NHLPA, and I have to wonder if his work on the negotiating committee in the lockout year has made him some enemies in the media – I haven’t really seen anything in print in the way of a career retrospective or tribute to a guy that’s been putting it down old school on the ice for two decades. I am watching the Vancouver/Calgary game as I type this, and as the players lined up to start the third period, the Vancouver fans gave Trevor a standing ovation, so it hasn’t escaped their attention. It was quite a touching moment, actually, as even the Flames players backed away from the centre ice faceoff dot to allow Linden to raise his stick and acknowledge the cheers. Jim Hughson and Craig Simpson are speculating that Linden has already made his mind up to retire based upon the way he’s reacting to the fans’ cheers. If he has decided to hang them up – congratulations, Trevor, on a fine career: it is a shame that it had to end with no Stanley Cup rings on any of those fingers.