That's A Wrap

Sixteen wins. That's what it takes to win the Stanley Cup, and the Caps needed 24 games with which to earn those 16 victories. Here's a quick look at how they did that.

Washington went 8-4 on the front half, and 8-4 on the back. The Caps were just 6-5 at home, but were 10-3 on the road.

The Caps developed a pattern of feeling their way through the early portion of series, and then putting the hammer down on the opposition once they'd figured them out. Washington was even at 2-2 after four games of each of the first three rounds; it finally managed to get a 3-1 series lead for the first time in the Cup Final against Vegas. The Caps were 9-7 in Games 1-4 of all four series, and they were 7-1 while outscoring foes by a combined 31-14 in Games 5-7 seven of all four series.

After concluding the regular season with 105 points, the Caps vanquished a 97-point team (Columbus), a 100-point team (Pittsburgh), a 113-point team (Tampa Bay) and a 109-point team (Vegas). The Caps beat the reigning Vezina Trophy goaltender (Sergei Bobrovsky) in the first round, a defending two-time Cup champ goalie (Matt Murray) in the second round, a 2018 Vezina finalist (Andrei Vasilevskiy) in the third round and a three-time Stanley Cup champion (Marc-Andre Fleury) in the Cup Final.

Washington head coach Barry Trotz and his staff overcame a two-time Jack Adams Award-winning coach (John Tortorella) in the first round, a defending two-time Cup champ coach (Mike Sullivan) in the second round), a guy (Jon Cooper) who has guided his team to the conference final in three of the last four seasons, and a two-time Adams Award finalist (Gerard Gallant) who is the odds-on favorite to win the Award next week.

Washington averaged 3.58 goals per game in the playoffs, tops among the field of 16. The Caps surrendered an average of 2.54 goals per game in the playoffs, the fourth best mark in the league. During the regular season, the Capitals averaged 3.12 goals for and 2.90 goals against per game.

During the playoffs, Washington's goaltending and defense overcame the NHL's highest scoring regular season team (Tampa Bay), its third-highest scoring team (Pittsburgh) and its fifth-highest scoring team (Vegas).

In short, the Caps earned it.