Legendary hockey reporter Stan Fischler writes a weekly scrapbook for NHL.com. Fischler, known as "The Hockey Maven," shares his insight and humor with readers each Wednesday. This week traces the Washington Capitals from an eight-win expansion team to Presidents' Trophy winners and Stanley Cup champions, and their lofty status in the Metropolitan Division.
The prosperous era of Alex Ovechkin and the Washington Capitals has been gilded by Presidents' Trophy winners (2010, '16, '17), the 2018 Stanley Cup championship, record-breaking feats by "The Great 8" and continued success well into this season.
It has been accomplished under the stewardship of Brooklyn-born Ted Leonsis, who has owned the Capitals for more than a quarter of a century and whose mantra steadfastly remains the same.
"I want to win Cups," Leonsis said in remarks published in the 2025 Hockey Business Annual. "The most important thing is winning the championship because there's no arguing, no calculating. It's zero sum -- and we won one."
Since Leonsis purchased the Capitals in 1999, they've won seven Southeast Division titles and the Metropolitan Division six times.
"Playing offense is a much better way to be a leader than playing defense and protecting what you have," Leonsis said, "but you're only as good as what's going to happen next year."
Ovechkin was the No. 1 pick in the 2004 NHL Draft. His stardom was obvious as a rookie (2005-06), when he finished third in NHL scoring and won the Calder Memorial Trophy given to "to the player selected as the most proficient in his first year of competition in the NHL." Since then, Ovechkin has earned many awards, scored his 895th goal to pass Wayne Gretzky for most in NHL history and became the first in the League to 900 goals.
The Capitals are among the best teams in the NHL guided by Spencer Carbery, the winner of the 2025 Jack Adams Award voted as top coach.
"This is a team with a high ceiling," Washington Post analytics expert Neil Greenberg said in a radio interview Dec 10. "When they get rolling, you're not going to beat them."
Their success story is a paradigm of pain and progress being inseparable; the 1974-75 NHL Expansion team went 8-67 with five ties, including losses of 11-1, 12-1, 10-0, 10-3, 12-1 and 10-2. The 1975-76 Capitals (11-59 with 10 ties) went 0-22 with three ties from Nov. 29 to Jan. 21.
The wait for a Stanley Cup Playoff berth was eight years, and it took a trade to pull the franchise out of the doldrums. During the 1982 NHL Board of Governors meeting, Capitals general manager David Poile was seated next to Montreal Canadiens GM Irving Grundman. Poile talked his neighbor into trading defenseman Rod Langway, his defense partner Brian Engblom, forward Doug Jarvis and forward prospect Craig Laughlin for Washington captain Ryan Walter and defenseman Rick Green.
The deal was completed Sept. 9, 1982.
"The acquisitions added a major injection of Canadiens swagger into the Caps dressing room, and a lot of prizes," wrote Glenn Dreyfuss, author of "The Legends of Landover: Long-Lost Stories of the Washington Capitals."
Langway won the first of two Norris Trophies voted as best defenseman. The Capitals (39-35 with 16 ties) made the playoffs for the first time after going 26-41 (13 ties) the season before.
"The last 43 years has seen the Capitals become the most consistent franchise in the NHL," Poile told me. "Their winning percentage in that era is in the top three of all teams during that time, culminating with winning the Stanley Cup. The Caps are the model for success in the NHL."
Another boost occurred after Barry Trotz became coach in 2014-15 and convinced Ovechkin that defending hard would not affect his ability to score -- and it didn't. He scored 15 playoff goals and won the 2018 Conn Smythe Trophy voted as postseason MVP.
Ovechkin hasn't done it alone. This season he's getting help from top scorers Tom Wilson, Jakob Chychrun and John Carlson, and young players including 24-year-old forward Aliaksei Protas.
"The Capitals have many good things happening," Greenberg said. "There's good goaltending (Logan Thompson, Charlie Lindgren) and a lot of scorers. This team can hurt you if you don't take them seriously."
