Alex Ovechkin didn’t trip on his shoelaces. He didn’t whiff on shots or pull a McNabb on the blue line. His Washington Capitals didn’t get embarrassed or booed off the ice (though the former might have been deserved) at the end of Wednesday’s inevitable Game 7 home loss to the perennial Caps-killing Pittsburgh Penguins.
Maybe they did choke under the weight of three decades of postseason failure. Or maybe the story behind the latest and greatest playoff collapse for the NHL’s most underachieving franchise was far less grandiose: shoddy goaltending and how-did-that-miss offensive opportunities, including Ovechkin’s own sweet-spot slap shot that was destined for the back of the net until it somehow got deflected by the shaft of Marc-André Fleury’s stick.