How to prepare yourself for the inevitable Washington Capitals collapse
Once a year, at least a dozen hockey reporters are forced to write the same story about the most-recent playoff flameout of the Washington Capitals. To cut down on time for those brave souls, we figured we'd save everyone the trouble of having to come up with original material by providing a template for how to write the inevitable "Caps lose" gamer. Just follow along with the copy and insert words/phrases/stats, Mad Libs-style, into the bolded, bracketed sections.
[Cliched lede sentence about April being the cruelest month in Washington, or the inevitability of death, taxes and Caps playoff losses or, if you want to get in the New York Post vibe, something like "Ovechkin? More like NOvechkin." Use your imagination. Be creative.]
(Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)
The Washington Capitals experienced yet another early, [synonym for surprise] exit from the NHL playoffs on Thursday, dropping a [adjective for close], [indicate whether or not it was in overtime - it was] [Game 6 or 7] against the [team that finished in 6th, 7th or 8th place] in the [round before the Eastern Conference Finals]. The Capitals had [statistic indicating strength of the team's regular season] while [team mentioned above] made the playoffs after a final-week push.
Washington, which entered the playoffs as a [type the word "favorite" without being brought to tears by laughter - water is bad for your keyboard] to win the Stanley Cup, experienced another [variant of "choke"] that's become all but the playoff norm for one of the most underachieving teams in sports over the last [take the last two digits of the current year and add 14] years. This series loss was the [count up playoff appearances since 1998]th time in [subtract 1998 from current year] seasons that the Caps failed to win more than one playoff series and the [let's just go with 9]th time they were ousted by a higher-seeded team.
(Photo by Rob Carr/Getty Images)
Not even a [variant of "sold out"] Verizon Center nor a sea of [whatever color the Stepford-like Caps fans have decided to dress en masse this year], could change the team's luck. The [deluded number of attendees at Verizon Center] were whipped into a frenzy [cringeworthy number of minutes] before the drop of the puck. But those fans [phrase to replace "gluttons for punishment'] were hushed early when [other team] scored a goal at the [minute mark between 15 and 19] of the first period. Despite fits and starts over the next [time of first goal subtracted from 60] minutes, the ending was as predictable as [Michael Bay movie - any Michael Bay movie].
It was a [try to make it sound like this wasn't foretold in the stars] loss for the Caps, who were out to a [2-0 or 3-0 or 3-1] lead in the series before the [other team] forced a Game 7 after a [overtime win in whichever game of the comeback involved overtime].
The Caps were done in by their usual playoff demons. The team went [percentage less than 10%] on their power play, goaltender [name of goalie] allowed [percentage over 40] more goals than he had in his [adjective for good] regular season and, once again, Alex Ovechkin was a virtual no-show, scoring fewer points in the series than [unheralded defenseman] despite being a favorite to win his [number of current MVPs] MVP award.
(Photo by Patrick McDermott/NHLI via Getty Images)
[Entire paragraph about how Ovechkin would be a poor man's Peyton Manning if he actually could do a little winning in the playoffs. As a result, he's more like a rich man's Jay Cutler. If writing for a Washington paper, ignore the fact that he's the least successful great player in NHL history, lest you get dozens of poorly-spelled missives from fans who refuse to accept the notion that Ovechkin comes up small in the playoffs. These won't be poorly spelled because Caps fans are dumb, it'll be because they refuse to remove the blinders they wear 24/7/366. (It's a leap year.) If you're writing for a national publication, feel free to give Ovechkin all due scorn, pointing out the fact that no multiple-time NHL MVP has ever had so little playoff success. Oh, and that Sidney Crosby is way better.]
Despite the [too-early round] exit, fans were still [something nicer than "clinging to the desperate fantasy"] that the Caps are closer than ever to making the [whatever the next round of the playoffs is].
"[Hilariously upbeat quote from man wearing red], said [name of poor sap whose playoff beard had been growing for all of 11 days] of Potomac. "[Continuation of quote that already looks ahead to next season which, in a slice of good news for Caps fans, starts in like 3 weeks]."
After acknowledging he'd take a few days to recover from the latest playoff [collapse/meltdown/choke job/implosion/explosion/some kind of -ion], coach [name of guy about to be fired] said it was time to start focusing on [next calendar year].
(Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)
"We were so close," said [soon-to-be temporarily unemployed coach]. "It's a disappointment but [flowery outlook that treats the regular season like it actually matters and is something to be built upon.]"
Washington sports fans are all but immune to the playoff losses by now. [If written before 2018: "The Nats are [0-for playoff record by team] since their 2012 playoff debut and the Redskins haven't won a playoff game in more than a decade."] [If written after 2018: "It's been a hard enough six months in Washington anyway, with Redskins quarterback Kirk Cousins getting benched for [current Titans backup QB] and Bryce Harper signing with the New York Yankees for [astronimcally insane number, like GDP of Scandinavian country insane] dollars.]
(Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)
[1st through 6th]- term President Donald Trump, who took over the mantle of the No. 1 yuuugest [don't worry, it's a word now] Caps fan upon his move to Washington, arrived to a standing ovation midway through the first period.