The four teams still in the running for the last Eastern Conference playoff spot on Tuesday could split cleanly into two groups: "next year" and "last chance." For the Flyers and the Red Wings, both on the relative upswing, they could look to their core of mid-20s skaters and believe that, whatever happened, a scrap for eighth would not go down as this generation's peak. For the Penguins and Capitals, the two oldest teams in the league, their missed postseasons of 2023 were unfamiliar failures, and with so many goals for each created by the work of guys in their mid-30s, this week felt like a last gasp for air. If 36-year-old Sidney Crosby and 38-year-old Alex Ovechkin couldn't carry denuded rosters, there was little reason to believe they could do so at 37 and 39.
And only one team remains. The Red Wings and Flyers detonated each other's chances near-simultaneously. The Penguins were idle but didn't get the results they needed. And so the Caps, like Paulie in the final season of The Sopranos, inexplicably survived despite seeming the least impressive of them all.
Even the way they clinched was hilariously inapt, coming on an empty-netter with the score 1-1. The Flyers no longer needed to force a regulation victory, because the Wings had just a few moments earlier eliminated them in Detroit's typical dramatic fashion. But Philly hadn't gotten the word yet and went six-on-five, so T.J. Oshie took advantage of the opening where the goalie used to be.
"We'll take it," Ovechkin said afterward. "Thanks, Philly.”
It leaps out at you in bright red on the NHL's own standings page: minus-37. That's the Washington Capitals' goal differential on the year. Only the lowly Canadiens, Blue Jackets, Ducks, Blackhawks, and Sharks have worse, and it's not like this is an early-season trend the team has turned around. In their last 25 games, they've been outscored 69-78. In their last 10, it's 21-27. Though they were weighed down by a six-game losing streak that carried into the first week of April, the Caps found a way to get back up after blowouts and squeak through low-scoring wins with surprise hero Charlie Lindgren filling the net. Just the conference-leading Rangers and Stars have bettered Washington's 20 wins in one-goal games. Nobody but basement-dwellers Chicago and San Jose lost by three-plus goals more often than the Caps did. This evened out to make Washington the lucky median of a conference with 16 teams. In the NHL, that's enough to punch a playoff ticket.
As a reward for their "efforts," the Capitals will face the Rangers, hockey's best team by record. Given that this franchise hasn't won a playoff series since their 2018 Cup, and this is the weakest they've looked since Ovi became able to legally order vodka in D.C., their expectations are sub-basement level. But if the Capitals have anything going for them at all, it's the sheer desperation of mortality, and the crack in the door left open by hockey's randomness. There is no long-term plan in place in Washington, no way to take defeat as a moral victory or a learning experience. There is this series and the darkness behind it. Reinforcements are thin. Everyone's body is breaking down. For guys like Oshie, Ovechkin, and John Carlson, they have to play these games like it's the last truly competitive hockey of their lives. Because there's a good chance it is.
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![The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has captured the sharpest infrared images to date of one of the most distinctive objects in our skies, the Horsehead Nebula. These observations show a part of the iconic nebula in a whole new light, capturing its complexity with unprecedented spatial resolution. Webb’s new images show part of the sky in the constellation Orion (The Hunter), in the western side of the Orion B molecular cloud. Rising from turbulent waves of dust and gas is the Horsehead Nebula, otherwise known as Barnard 33, which resides roughly 1300 light-years away. The nebula formed from a collapsing interstellar cloud of material, and glows because it is illuminated by a nearby hot star. The gas clouds surrounding the Horsehead have already dissipated, but the jutting pillar is made of thick clumps of material that is harder to erode. Astronomers estimate that the Horsehead has about five million years left before it too disintegrates. Webb’s new view focuses on the illuminated edge of the top of the nebula’s distinctive dust and gas structure. The Horsehead Nebula is a well-known photon-dominated region, or PDR. In such a region ultraviolet light from young, massive stars creates a mostly neutral, warm area of gas and dust between the fully ionised gas surrounding the massive stars and the clouds in which they are born. This ultraviolet radiation strongly influences the gas chemistry of these regions and acts as the most important source of heat. These regions occur where interstellar gas is dense enough to remain neutral, but not dense enough to prevent the penetration of far-ultraviolet light from massive stars. The light emitted from such PDRs provides a unique tool to study the physical and chemical processes that drive the evolution of interstellar matter in our galaxy, and throughout the Universe from the early era of vigorous star formation to the present day. Owing to its proximity and its nearly edge-on geometry, the Horsehead Nebula is an ideal target for astronomers to study the physical structures of PDRs and the evolution of the chemical characteristics of the gas and dust within their respective environments, and the transition regions between them. It is considered one of the best objects in the sky to study how radiation interacts with interstellar matter. This image was captured with Webb’s NIRCam (Near-InfraRed Camera) instrument. [Image description: At the bottom of the image a small portion of the Horsehead Nebula is seen close-in, as a curved wall of thick, smoky gas and dust. Above the nebula various distant stars and galaxies can be seen up to the top of the image. One star is very bright and large, with six long diffraction spikes that cross the image. The background fades from a dark red colour above the nebula to black.]](https://lede-admin.defector.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/28/2024/04/STScI-01HV4CG0EACM1MC07E10X19KNX.jpg?resize=2880%2C1920)
