Caps Briefing: Bottle Up and Explode
It's over. Last night, the Caps lost game seven in overtime to the Philadelphia Flyers. They will now face the dreaded eighteen hole golf courses of McLean, and their own personal workout regimens. Led by the season-long heroics of Alexander Ovechkin, Mike Green and Olaf Kolzig, the team came back from 14th in the East at New Years to third place in the East with home ice advantage in their first playoff series in five years.
For superstar Ovechkin, the summer will be a time to face the media at the NHL Awards Show, where he is expected to be crowned as the league's most valuable player. For the team, it will be a chance to see how that media attention, following as it does upon a strong showing in a nationally televised playoff series, will help its chances on the free agent market.
Photo by peteetchells
For Kolzig, Cristobal Huet, Matt Cooke and Sergei Fedorov, the summer will be a time to decide whether or not they want to play in Washington next year. All four are unrestricted free agents. I think our readers will agree that the team would be lucky to have each and every one of them back. Of course, George McPhee will have to work hard to make all those salaries fit inside the salary cap, especially while matching offers for restricted free agent Green.
Speaking of McPhee, he's been the general manager of the Capitals since the late 1990s. This is the first summer this decade that we have no doubt whether he will be back in the fall. After a decade of five-year plans and setbacks, the team is finally coming together as advertised. The nation has taken note. Now he has the opportunity to take aim to face the Flyers next year, and try to build further on his success. One Caps fans didn't wait until next year to take aim at the Flyers' faces. We certainly understand how he feels, but seriously, throwing bottles, whether they're plastic or not, is not cool.