With the NHL announcing on Tuesday its plans to restart the 2019-20 season, the regular season portion of the season will be considered completed, and the league will proceed to a 24-team championship tournament. Ending the regular season short of the complete 82-game schedule has its consequences, though. Not least of those are the milestones and records players will be denied reaching (or lows avoiding), at least for the moment. For the Washington Capitals, what players and fans are being denied is significant. Here is a sampling.
Alex Ovechkin:
Nicklas Backstrom:
John Carlson:
Tom Wilson:
Braden Holtby:
Team:
One hopes that the league can launch its postseason plan safely and effectively. To do that, the regular season was sacrificed, the third time in 16 seasons that a full regular season was not completed. It is a small price to pay in the context of the league, it’s players, its staff, its arena partners, and fans. It is a smaller price to pay in the larger context of the crisis that necessitated this action.
But for those who follow the history of teams with interest, such actions do have consequences for that history, and the Capitals are no exception.