WASHINGTON -- The Capitals are the best team in the NHL.
Until they face this tantalizing, transformational version of the Penguins and fall yet again, as happened by a 4-3 count Thursday night at the Verizon Center on this Sidney Crosby overtime breakaway:
Braden Holtby, owner of 47 wins, is the best goaltender in the NHL.
Until the Penguins undress him, as they have via nine goals over the past two meetings.
Alexander Ovechkin, owner of 47 goals, is the best scorer in the NHL.
Until he faces the Penguins, who held him without a goal -- no, without a point -- over the full five-game season series.
Yeah, Washington's hockey team, owner of 55 wins, the Presidents' Trophy and perhaps unprecedented expectations here to finally raise the Stanley Cup, is all that and more.
Until their archnemesis shows up.
And don't think for a second that all concerned -- both sides -- aren't aware of that. Not after the Penguins had just pasted the Capitals, 6-2, March 20 at Consol Energy Center. Not with the Penguins having rattled off eight wins in a row, 14 of the past 15, and on this very night clinching home ice in the first round of playoffs. And not with the Capitals having lost nine of their past 14.
"That was a big challenge tonight, going against the hottest team in the league," Holtby was saying in the home locker room. "Hopefully, we realize that they were a lot better team tonight. ... I don't even know how we took that to overtime."
"Obviously, it's frustrating," Ovechkin said. "You can't give a 3-0 lead to a team like that. We know what they can do."
"Pittsburgh's playing really well," Barry Trotz would add later from the coach's podium. "They're playing fast. They're playing with a lot of determination on the puck. We didn't have those."
For those of you whose sporting tastes include the National Football League, this should all sound blissfully familiar. Because the Capitals are essentially the Bengals. They're really impressive in the regular season, they raise a lot of hope, and then they run into Pittsburgh.
That's been going on not for years but for decades now, from what just might have been the greatest goal of Mario Lemieux's career given the circumstances, keeping the team's ultimately futile playoff chances alive way back in 1988:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCJ3Zhng8rU#t=26
To Petr Nedved in the dead of night in 1996:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UN_jY0bBcQ
To Martin Straka on Olaf Kolzig in 2001:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtEY_Y0Z4FE
The Capitals love to call this a rivalry, as they mentioned many times during the in-game entertainment Thursday. It isn't a rivalry. The Penguins and Flyers have a rivalry. The only relationship between the Penguins and Capitals is that of nemesis and victim, at least until the day comes when their history is reversed even slightly.
Wait, you wanted to read about this game?
Oh, come on, have a little fun! That's what this time of year used to be about in Pittsburgh and, man alive, is it ever shaping up that way again.
Say it with me: What a hockey team.
Sure, this one had its harried moments after Matt Cullen beat Holtby twice, then Conor Sheary did likewise to build that 3-0 lead:
As Holtby intimated, the Capitals got some breaks after that, but they also began to work harder and, with all that skill, they were bound to break through at some point. That they did so for three goals, two by Marcus Johansson and the equalizer by Andre Burakovsky with 6:34 remaining, had more to do with them than the Penguins.
Mike Sullivan agreed when I brought that up afterward.
"They had a push," he said. "Sure they did. They're a good team. They have good players. We tried to weather the storm. We tried to get the momentum back."
I mentioned, then, that the Penguins did, in fact, appear to bounce back on the very shift after the Burakovsky goal.
"We just kept playing. Just kept playing. Six minutes were left. That's a lot of time. We refocused and tried to play the game the right way. I liked that."
What wasn't there to like?
Cullen is 39 going on 29, the way he's whizzing about the rink, and the hands, arguably, have never been better. Seriously, the man's got 16 goals, his highest total since the same number in 2008-09 with the Hurricanes and third-highest of his career.
"It's been good," he said. "I'm fortunate to be with a lot of great players. I am."
He's also been "like a second coach for us," as Sullivan described it after this game, and he sounded like it, too.
"It was good for us to see that, good for us to experience it," Cullen remarked, believe it or not, on the Capitals' comeback. "The crowd really got into it. It was like a playoff game in here. That was good for us."
Conor Sheary skates back to the bench after a shift in the first period. -- DKPS