Washington Capitals

The Washington Capitals face their most heated rival, the Pittsburgh Penguins , for the second time in five days Thursday. But as players prepared to travel to Western Pennsylvania, the usual excitement over the matchup was replaced by a serious, somber tone in practice. For the NHL-worst Capitals, the only focus is on rebuilding fortitude after a dreadful 2-7-1 start . Mental mistakes, a lack of offensive production and too many soft goals against are among the woes that have cost the Capitals on what seems to be...

BALTIMORE — Irene Pollin, the widow of the late Washington sports team owner Abe Pollin, has donated $10 million to a Johns Hopkins University center for the prevention of heart disease. Hopkins announced Thursday that Pollin's gift will support the Ciccarone Center for the Prevention of Heart Disease in the division of cardiology. Irene Pollin lost two children to heart ailments and is a longtime advocate of heart health. Abe Pollin, who died in 2009, owned the Washington Wizards and...

For the second time in his career, Adam Oates will fill a leadership void on the Washington Capitals in the wake of Dale Hunter's departure. Nearly thirteen years after Oates followed Hunter as a captain, he has been named the Capitals' head coach a month and a half after Hunter stepped down from the position. Oates, who spent the past two seasons as an assistant in New Jersey, was named the 16th coach in franchise history Tuesday, making him the fifth bench boss during General Manager George McPhee's 15-year tenure.

The great teams use a tough loss to get better. When you hear a lot of talk from guys who just lost big about how unfair it all was and how they couldn't get a call from the refs, you can be certain they'll lose the next one, too. You didn't need to go to any videotape to analyze why the Washington Capitals can't get it done in the playoffs year after year; all you had to do was listen to their captain and general manager. It wasn't so much the words that came from the mouth of Alex Ovechkin that were...

The great teams use a tough loss to get better. When you hear a lot of talk from guys who just lost big about how unfair it all was and how they couldn't get a call from the refs, you can be certain they'll lose the next one, too. You didn't need to go to any videotape to analyze why the Washington Capitals can't get it done in the playoffs year after year; all you had to do was listen to their captain and general manager. It wasn't so much the words that came from the mouth of Alex Ovechkin that were...

Heading into an important game in Carolina on March 14, the Washington Capitals had lost three straight, their two best players combining for just one point in that span. If Washington was going to make a push for the playoffs, it needed to hurry. So Coach Adam Oates reunited franchise pillars Alex Ovechkin and Nicklas Backstrom on the same line for the first time since the first week of the season, even though the Capitals' bench boss now insists he can't recall why he thought it...

The atmosphere at the Washington Capitals ' practice facility in Arlington on Friday was undeniably peculiar. Players who normally would be just a week away from opening training camp packed their equipment bags, taped their extra sticks together and loaded hockey gear into their cars. Barring an unlikely last-minute deal on a new collective bargaining agreement, they will all be locked out by the NHL after the previous CBA expires at 11:59 p.m. Saturday. Once a lockout commences,...

A day after trading goalie Semyon Varlamov to Colorado for a pair of draft picks, General Manager George McPhee added a veteran presence to the Washington Capitals ' depth chart in net by signing Tomas Vokoun. Arguably the biggest name among goaltenders in this year's class of unrestricted free agents, Vokoun accepted a meager one-year, $1.5 million contract to compete for a Stanley Cup. "He's been on teams with no chance to win for a very long time," Vokoun's agent, Michael Deutsch, said.

With eight games remaining in the regular season, the chance of Washington Capitals defenseman Mike Green returning from a concussion in time for the playoffs is uncertain, Coach Bruce Boudreau said Thursday. Green has missed 18 of the past 20 games since he was hit in the head by a puck on Feb. 6 against Pittsburgh, and he hasn't taken part in a full practice since he suffered another concussion when the Rangers' Derek Stepan hit him in the head on Feb. 25. The good news, Boudreau said,...

Even as a swarm of Chicago Blackhawks converged upon his net, hacking away for even the slightest chance of finding the puck early in Friday's preseason game, Tomas Vokoun looked calm. His movements were deliberate. He rarely gave up second-chance attempts, absorbing the puck each time it came toward him. While it wasn't the perfect debut in a Washington Capitals sweater — Vokoun, 35, acknowledged a certain amount of rust in his first start since April — the contest offered a...

Earlier this week as the Washington Capitals packed up their equipment bags, taped bundles of sticks together and prepared to make trips to offseason homes, they did so confident of what will await them when they return for training camp in the fall. While there will certainly be some roster alterations following Washington's first-round playoff elimination, there is no doubt about who will coach, like there was last summer after Dale Hunter's departure. And no speculation about what type of...

Adam Oates gathered his Washington Capitals one final time Wednesday at the club's Arlington headquarters, not yet 48 hours after the season collapsed. Oates has been here for a single season, and a truncated one at that, but he knows the organization's recent theme: potential to contend for championships, only to exit the playoffs early. So he brought up another franchise: the Boston Bruins. For three straight seasons, Boston entered the postseason identifying itself as a Stanley Cup...

Two days after the New York Rangers won Game 7 to advance to the second round of the Stanley Cup playoffs, Coach John Tortorella took aim at the Washington Capitals' focus in the series and criticized them for complaining about the officiating. "We've got everybody and their brother whining out there in Washington about what happened in that series," Tortorella told reporters in New York on Tuesday, according to the New York Daily News. "And I...

After watching the Washington Capitals lose their seven-game playoff series to the New York Rangers, I've been thinking a lot about luck in sports. Most games and sports are some combination of skill and luck. Board games for little kids, such as Candyland and Chutes and Ladders, are almost all luck. You roll the dice or flip a card, and you move your piece. It doesn't take much skill. Some sports involve hardly any luck at all. In swimming, for example, the best and fastest swimmer wins.

There have been so many days after around here, the mornings following those dreary nights when hockey season ends. Inevitably, with metronomic regularity, it thuds to a disappointing stop, and the tired and tortured souls who dozens of times a year pull on Washington Capitals sweaters and Washington Capitals hats rise to consider the annual question: Can I do this again? In the late stages of the Capitals' complete collapse Monday night — what became a dreadful 5-0 loss to the New York...

This is the ritual day of rage when those who love the Washington Capitals scream at the skies, rend their red garments and curse the hockey gods. Or at least say bad things about Alex Ovechkin , George McPhee and Ted Leonsis until they cool off for a few months, then re-up for more Rock the Red fantasies about Lord Stanley's ever-receding Cup. For the Caps themselves, this is the hour of ritual rationalization, excuse-making and wagon-circling . It's the time for talk of...

The Washington Capitals wrapped up a rare second straight day of practice in Arlington Friday morning with a shootout challenge that disguised a little conditioning with some fun. If a player from one group scored, the other team had to do sprints between the side boards. It made for a lighthearted conclusion of this brief respite of three days between games, with players joking and chirping at each other before embarking on another critical road trip. Beginning Saturday in Buffalo, the Capitals will play three games...

Back in November when the Washington hockey season was still young and held so much promise, the Capitals ' superstar left wing met with reporters in Toronto. The question was asked politely then and it's been posed with a greater sense of urgency many times since: What's wrong with Alex Ovechkin ?    "Everything's okay with Alex Ovechkin," the five-time all-star said. "Yeah. "    There was a follow-up: Is it hard being Alex Ovechkin sometimes?    ...

The stands at Verizon Center were already littered with empty seats, many fans already on the streets of Chinatown with the Washington Capitals on the cusp of a deflating 5-0 loss to the New York Rangers in Game 7 of their Eastern Conference quarterfinal series Monday night. But more than eight minutes still remained in the third period and New York goalie Henrik Lundqvist wasn't ready to give Washington an inch. So when Capitals rookie Tom Wilson fired a power snap shot, Lundqvist stopped it....

There was a moment Monday, one that will be lost in yet another restless offseason, in which it seemed it could be Alex Ovechkin's night. In one first-period shift, the Washington Capitals right winger crushed helpless New York Rangers defenseman John Moore in the open ice. He then tracked down Steve Eminger and delivered another blow. And before he returned to the bench, he lined up Ryan McDonagh , jarring him. The boards rattled. Verizon Center roared. But as the clock...