Morning After: Game 7 Heartache Still Fresh

As I watched the final secondsof Game 7 tick off the clock last night, my heart along with those of all the others who've so faithfully followed the Capitals for seasons past, fell to my stomach with that all-too-familiar pain. The pain of coming "this close" once again - only this year was supposed to be the year for the team that broke countless franchise records and earned their first President's Trophy. And this morning, well the pain is still just as fresh. In addition to being a single mom of twin teenage travel hockey and lacrosse playing boys and holding down a full-time job, Hockey Mom spends countless hours during the season following the Caps for both my blog and ScarletCaps.com. And I do it because I truly love this team - from the most authentic owner in professional sports in Ted Leonsis, to their great PR staff and above all, the individual players who've given us so much joy and hope during this past season. That's just one of the reasons I still have this feeling of emptiness deep in my gut...

There will be much fingerpointing and mud strewn in the aftermath of last night's loss and the abrupt shattering of yet another season's hopes of finally hoisting the Stanley Cup. Lots of media types (and of course the Crosby lovers) are placing much of the blame on Ovechkin. If you watched his post-game presser (where the distraught captain literally could find no words to explain the reasons for the loss), no one wanted it more than Alex Ovechkin. But unfortunately, therein lies part of the problem. As several of his team mates did not play to their potential through the entire series, the driven sniper tried too hard to make things happen on his own - not conducive to the "team play" concept. And that's the second problem. Stanley Cup winning teams tend to step up their games in the playoffs (especially their stars) and work more as a "team." That's where the underdog Montreal Canadiens beat us fair and square. There were no individual offensive stars per se shining for the Habs but their team work on the pk and one hot-handed goalie held the league's leading power play to a depressing 1 of 33. The Habs blocked 41 shots in the game last night - 41 freaking shots. How many did Mike Green block? Speaking of Mike Green, HM has been on the defense of the talented defenseman against Green haters for much of the season, but there's really nothing anyone can say (and that includes you, Coach) to defend his invisibility come crunch time anymore. Green just simply neglected to do his job - defending the puck - for the majority of this series. And on top of that, he handed the Habs two gift-wrapped opportunities resulting from his ill-timed, selfish penalties. Hockey Mom would have put #52 in time-out for the rest of the game after that first penalty. It really doesn't matter how many goals he scored during the regular season, he has now gained a reputation of not being able to hang with the big boys in the playoffs - which he will have to work his butt off to overcome.  And same goes with Alex Semin - though HM would not cry too many tears to see him gone in the off-season. As crazy talented as the Russian sniper is, he just doesn't seem to have the heart and is reluctant to get his nose dirty for those garbage goals that are all too important in the playoffs.

Yep, GMGM and the management group will have lots of difficult decisions to make in this off-season that started way too damn early. No secret, even more glaringly visible now, that we need more gritty help on the blueline. And maybe another veteran presence in that locker room (but God bless Mike Knuble for all his efforts) to shake some of these younger guys up. I don't know what the perfect answer is to building a team made for the playoffs, but I do know that this is going to sting for some time to come. Once I can even watch hockey again, I guess I'll be rooting for my Sedin twins and the Canucks. But for now, that's just too painful...