“This moment...” Alexander Ovechkin started, flanked at the podium by the Stanley Cup and the Conn Smythe Trophy. He never once that I saw looked at the latter, but he kept glancing toward the big one, the one he had kissed and lofted and screamed into and shared with every single one of his teammates and coworkers.…

If ever you need confirmation of the theory of general relativity, just watch your team in a Stanley Cup clincher. After Lars Eller scored the go-ahead (and soon to be Cup-winning) goal with 7:37 left, time started doing funny things, depending on who you were rooting for. While those final minutes and seconds ticked…

Hockey is over for the summer. That sucks! Perhaps, maybe, the only thing that can get us through those lean months will be the annual masterpiece that is the Hockey Night In Canada season-ending montage, set this year to Oasis (??). Here you are.

This year was different. The Washington Capitals are Stanley Cup champions.

Before Game 4, a reporter spotted in Evgeny Kuznetsov’s locker a bottle of Fuck Off pills. It’s a gag gift—you know the sort of thing—even if I’m not sure exactly what the gag is supposed to be. But, uh, it might’ve worked. Because Kuznetsov went the fuck off, racking up four assists in the Capitals’ 6-2 win over Vegas

There is no secret to what is happening to the Golden Knights, now down 3-1 in the Stanley Cup final after playing nigh-unbeatable throughout the playoffs. The zamboni has transformed back into a pumpkin, and not just a regular pumpkin, but a gross smelly rotted one.

If you have not yet seen Braden Holtby’s game-saving save with two minutes left in Washington’s 3-2 Game 2 win, well, first see Alex Ovechkin’s reaction on the bench:

I’m so annoyed that after the pure mainline rush that was Game 1, I have to think about Tom Wilson’s dirty-ass play. Imagine how Jonathan Marchessault feels:

They have been telling us for decades—a necessarily nebulous “they,” but one that includes the NHL itself, needing to sell the present brand of hockey shaped by rule changes and coaching revolutions and swollen goalie gear, and certain fans, trying to convince themselves that we’re watching the peak of the sport—that…

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It’s a funny thing. Year after year you’re told “this is your year,” and it never is, and then, finally, when no one thinks you matter anymore ... it might be your year.

“That was pretty much a perfect game,” Devante Smith-Pelly said after the Capitals’ convincing 3-0 win to take the Lightning to a Game 7, and, yup. The offense was relentless, the defense was suffocating, and Braden Holtby was impenetrable when tested. (Smith-Pelly had a hell of a game himself, scoring a goal and …

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Subject: Had to buy depends

“We’ll be pretty good in three years and we’ll make a run in five or six,” predicted Golden Knights owner Bill Foley back in August. “This team isn’t going to have more than a dozen regulation wins,” predicted some dummy. This was, to put it as plainly as I can—and it’s a sentiment that wouldn’t have found and won’t…

The numbers are intimidating. The Tampa Bay Lightning had the league’s third best power play during the regular season, at 23.9 percent. They have the best power play of any team left alive, at 30.8 percent. They are 6-of-14 on the power play against the Capitals. They have scored a power-play goal in nine straight…

Jets defenseman Dustin Byfuglien is a big boy. Listed at 6-foot-5, 260 pounds, I would call him an immovable object if not for the fact that he’s usually moving toward you. And it’s gonna go badly for you.

The Golden Knights chalked up their Game 1 loss to effort. “They outworked us,” coach Gerard Gallant said. “We have to compete harder. We got to battle harder.” It’s the sort of thing a coach says all the time, but it’s also just about the only thing a team can try to change when they’re up against the most talented…

I’m sorry, what? The Caps spanked the Lightning last night. That’s two consecutive spankings! What is going on here? It would be a little too psychologically neat to posit that all the Ovechkin-era Capitals ever needed was to be underdogs, finally without pressure. Or that once they were finally able to dispatch their…

You could see it from the 300 level. Watching the Vegas Golden Knights beat the Blackhawks 5-4 in Chicago on Jan. 5 cemented two things in my mind about this NHL season. First, the Blackhawks were done, having been made to look exceedingly old and slow again. Second, the Golden Knights were very much for real. And fast…