By Sarah Ridenour
Baltimore Watchdog Staff Writer
WASHINGTON – Outside of Capital One Arena in Washington on Thursday, Capitals fans made their way to the team’s first game of the Stanley Cup playoffs against the Columbus Blue Jackets.
With music playing, balloons lining the main entrance, and the occasional “Let’s go Caps” chant, the mood seemed pretty optimistic and excited overall.
The same could not be said after the game.
After taking an early 2-0 lead in the first period, the Capitals ultimately fell to the Blue Jackets 4-3 in overtime, raising the specter that has haunted Washington sports teams for years: the curse of the playoffs.
Almost immediately after the game’s winning goal, fans flooded out of the arena with soft mumbles of things like “here we go again” as they headed to their cars. One fan said he’s sick of making the same angry walk to the metro after the Capitals lose a game they should have won.
Even though the Capitals are only down 1-0 in the best-of-seven series, some fans are already worried about how far they will go in these playoffs. Despite finishing the regular season first in the Metropolitan Division for the third year in a row, some fans say that the Caps, along with the other three main D.C. sports teams, are cursed, which is why no matter how dominate they are, they can’t make it past the second round of the playoffs.
None of the four main D.C. sports teams — the Redskins, Nationals, Wizards, and Capitals — have won a championship since the Redskins Super Bowl win in 1992.
In recent years, the Capitals, Nationals, and Wizards have all been pretty strong contenders to win titles, but they have each come up short every time in the playoffs.
While the Redskins haven’t been as successful, they have still shown glimmers of hope with players like RGIII, who fans thought could be the answer to their problems, but who was eventually pushed out due to injury.
These glimmers of hope in all four teams would ultimately turn into just another round of disappointment for fans, and the idea of the D.C. sports curse was born.
Capitals fan Kelly McKinney says when it comes to the Caps, she believes in the curse because of the team’s playoff history. Despite regular season success and being first in the league last year and the year before, they haven’t made it past the second round of the playoffs since 1998, and have never won the cup.
“They say that every year is ‘our year,’” McKinney said. “I have faith and hope that this year it really is, but we’ll see.”
Another fan says she feels the pain year after year with all four of the teams, but with the Caps especially she doesn’t understand how they can be so good during the regular season only to come up short in the playoffs.
“I’m from Maryland so I’ve been in the D.C. area all my life,” said Claire Weitzner. “With the Caps and Nats, especially, it’s like we’re there year after year but can never get the job done in the end. And as soon as we continue to lose momentum, it’s really hard to get back up.”
Some fans even make jokes about their city’s lack of playoff success.
“This year for Halloween I went as a disappointed D.C. sports fan,” Weitzner said. “I had on a Wizards shirt, a Nationals hat, and a broken heart and drew tears going down my face.”
Not all fans believe they’re cursed, though.
Grant Paulsen, co-host of “Grant and Danny” on 106.7 The Fan and Caps Overtime on NBC Sports Washington, says while it’s disappointing that none of the teams he loves have won any meaningful titles in his lifetime, he doesn’t believe in the so-called curse at all. He believes each year’s failures have been for different reasons.
“I think last year they got eliminated in the second round because [Caps goalie] Braden Holtby struggled, so they didn’t get great goaltending, and they also didn’t have strong secondary scoring,” Paulsen said. “The year before that it may have been their top lines weren’t producing much, or they had good goaltending but they couldn’t score. The answer is different every year.”
Fan P.J. Crowley agrees that there is no such curse, and the Capitals’ issue is that when it comes time for the playoffs, they aren’t playing as well as the other teams.
“It’s got to be a case where we’re starting to crest at this time of year, whereas before we’ve crest around January,” Crowley said.
While Paulsen doesn’t believe in a curse, he does say that it is shocking that the Caps haven’t been able to win the cup.
“For me, my explanation generally, and it makes people who believe in the curse upset, is that each year only one team wins, and math says that most years it not going to be you that wins it,” Paulsen said. “Now, for it to have never been the Caps when they have been as good as they have for 10 years, it’s fairly stunning because they’ve been one of the best teams in the league for over a decade.”
Paulsen also thinks all the losses between all of the four teams builds up over the years on the fans so that now they almost expect playoff failure no matter what. Fans start out hopeful, he said, but the moment something goes wrong, they start to count themselves out. This negative energy from the fans and media can then be felt all around, and put more pressure on the players, he said.
“There’s no doubt in my mind, especially with the Capitals, that they are always thinking about the history and the postseason failures,” Paulsen said. “I think when they lose a game like they did last night to go down 1-0 in the series, I think it’s on their minds and the fans minds more than it should be that ‘uh-oh, here we go again.’”
He then compares the Capitals to the Flyers, who went down 1-0 in their series after losing 7-0 to the Penguins, saying despite the Flyers not having won the cup in while, they don’t have that same mentality.
He says in D.C. there is a disappointed, sad feeling that washes over fans, who take those emotions into the arenas effect the players as well.
“Even though I don’t believe in the curse for a second, I think that players can feel the weight of all the losses before them, which makes it harder for them to shake off one loss.”
Evan Engelhard says for things to change, it’s got to start with the fans.
“It starts with us and how we have to, I guess, ‘reverse the curse,’” said Engelhard. “I’m seeing a bunch of people crowded in the streets right now, but from November to June, the fans have to be in it as much as the players putting their bodies out there if we want to see success.”
While some fans believe in the curse and others don’t, most still remain hopeful that this year could finally be the Caps year that they have dreamed of for years.
“I’m definitely excited,” said fan Kevin Tippett. “I think they can go all the way any year, and I’m hopeful that this year will be the year they play up to their potential and be the great team that they are.”
“At the end of the day, we’ve just got to win more games than everyone else we play,” Crowley said. “If we can do that, we’ll be successful.”