Capitals Are Perennial ‘Next Year’s Champions’

Perhaps the title of the Capitals’ book should be “Next Year’s Champions.” But it’s already been used, by a Dallas writer whose volume on the can’t-win-the-big-one Cowboys appeared just before they went on a spurt that fetched two Super Bowl victories and a record number of consecutive winning seasons.

Maybe frustrated fans ought to march on Capital Centre and hang Bryan Murray in effigy. North Carolina basketball zealots did that in the early-’60s. Fortunately for them, nobody paid much attention and the object of their wrath, Dean Smith, proceeded to work himself to the head of the college coaching class.

Not that it’s much consolation for a team and a town that expected so much more, but others have recovered from deeper depression. Gloriously. So what Abe Pollin must decide sometime soon is how these Capitals look a season or so down the road. Are his players, like the early-’70s Cowboys, talented and resilient enough for a Stanley Cup breakthrough? Or are they, to borrow from the wisdom of Bum Phillips, just good enough to get you beat 21-7?

Painfully honest, Mike Gartner said the Capitals have learned a great deal from the Islanders over the years but that there’s no more to teach. So who are the real Capitals? The gritty and determined gang that has managed to finish second in the rugged Patrick Division in successive seasons, or the clods who stumbled to the under-.500 Rangers in the playoffs last year and blew a three-games-to-one lead against the Islanders this year?

The Capitals’ record in regular-season overtime games is splendid. They finished with back-to-back victories in sudden death, then couldn’t push the puck past Kelly Hrudey in nearly 69 tortuous overtime minutes, last Saturday night and Sunday morning, when they absolutely had to.

When Pollin looks at Murray what does he see? Is there a Tom Landry glint? The fire to overcome much early adversity and win grandly? Or is Murray, as his record suggests, unable to inspire a team for the only season that seems to count in the NHL--the playoffs?

Before Murray, the Capitals never advanced to the postseason. Under Murray, they are 15-18, winning two playoffs and losing five. They had the Rangers 2-1 last season and the Islanders 3-1 this season

If hockey were fair, Murray’s job would be safe. Most employers rate performance over an extended period higher than short-term success. Especially when the quick stuff, like hockey, involves such an element of luck. How many Capitals’ shots in Game 7 pinged harmlessly off the post? Pat LaFontaine’s ricochet went in.

In the sorry history of the Capitals, Murray’s record shines. The seven coaches who preceeded Murray were a combined 138-347-89. Murray is 246-160-60. In two of his last three regular seasons, the team has produced at least 100 points. Under Murray, it has gone from the pits to all but knocking on the palace door. How much does that count for? We’ll see. If the playoffs are all that matter, Murray very likely is gone.

And it’s impossible not to weigh the postseason very heavily. The playoffs are hockey’s hook, the time to coax casual fans into going bonkers. The Capitals are remarkable for grabbing potential converts and then letting them slip away. Converts such as me.

I avoid hockey whenever possible. Gimme golf, the sport where people also smack a small object with sticks but not each other. Gimme bowling even. Or team crochet. But when I try hockey, I’m almost always pleasantly surprised.

The players are very civil. Infinitely more cooperative to relative strangers, for instance, than baseball brats. They suffer fools, perhaps because so few outside the sport understand it. And play hard. As coaches go, Murray is refreshingly honest and forthright.

Trouble is, just when I start to get mildly excited, the season ends. I was looking forward to a Stanley Cup experience last year, after the Capitals surged past the Islanders. Then came the flop against the Rangers, who had won 14 fewer regular-season games.

I got trapped once more Saturday night. I picked up Ron Weber on the radio near the end of regulation and couldn’t let go until he said “goal” and “LaFontaine” in the same breath a few seconds shy of 2 a.m. Sunday. Sleep came easily. I’d caught this act before.

So have lots of Washingtonians, I suspect.

The Capitals have given us the excuse to clutch indifference once more. Even the early home games against the Islanders failed to sell out, the Capitals having lulled the town--and perhaps themselves--into a false sense of superiority. As they learned not quite a year ago, inferior teams don’t wilt.

Still, one exceptional positive seemed to emerge. Bob Mason might just be the fine pressure goalie around whom a playoff team with character could be constructed. He was every bit as sensational as Hrudey nearly the entire series.

This makes Pollin’s thinking more difficult. If somebody on the order of Al Arbour cannot be lured here, as Vince Lombardi was by the Redskins, why fire a coach who wins 60% of the time? Maybe the Capitals are Mason and a couple of trades away from playoff magic.

I’d give Murray one more chance. He has another year on his contract; honor it. He got the Capitals respectable, when that seemed close to impossible. In sports, five years is too brief a time to go from chumps to chokers. Even Landry didn’t get break-even good, with a team as sorry as the Capitals, until his seventh season. Murray ought to get another try at ripping away a label he may not deserve.