Same time, same place

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. When the season became hopeless, the woebegone Washington Capitals found new, playoff-bound teams for Peter Bondra and Sergei Gonchar.

But after one round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs, Bondra and Gonchar are in an all-too familiar position — back at their Maryland homes wondering what happened.

“I’m more disappointed than shocked,” Bondra said of Ottawa’s seven-game loss to Toronto in the latest edition of the Battle of Ontario. “I think we outplayed them, but we ran into a hot goalie. But that has always been the story of my teams in the playoffs.”

Of course, Maple Leafs netminder Ed Belfour is no Johan Hedberg or Glenn Healy; he’s a grizzled 39-year-old who led Dallas to the 1999 Stanley Cup. Since the sleek Senators, who came oh so close to the 2003 finals, couldn’t solve Belfour, they cost Jacques Martin, the NHL’s senior coach, his job after eight seasons.

“Jacques is a very good coach — there’s nothing more that he could have done,” Bondra said.

Which Bondra can’t say about himself. Hobbled by a hip flexor and a stomach pull that caused him to decline an invitation to play for Slovakia in the ongoing world championships, the Caps’ all-time scoring leader didn’t get a point in the seven-game series.

“I worked hard and tried my best, but I didn’t get any breaks,” said Bondra, who had 30 goals and 56 points in 73 playoff games for Washington. “Maybe if I had scored in one of the first couple of games, things would have been different, but the goals just didn’t happen. I was kind of shocked.”

And now Bondra, who had five goals and 14 points in 23 games for Ottawa and was happy playing there following his trade Feb.18, only can wait to see whether Senators general manager John Muckler and the new coach decide to pick up his $4.5million option. If not, Bondra will be a 36-year-old free agent coming off one of his worst seasons.

Impending free agent Gonchar won’t have any problem finding suitors after leading NHL defensemen with 58 points, but Boston’s loss of a 3-1 lead and the series to archrival Montreal left the 30-year-old Russian with a typically sour spring feeling. It was the fourth time in nine seasons that Gonchar’s team had blown a two-game lead.

“I’m happy to be home with family after more than a month of living in hotels, but it’s pretty tough to lose two years in a row like this,” Gonchar said, referring to Washington turning a 2-0 edge over Tampa Bay into a 4-2 defeat in the 2003 playoffs. “We were up 3-1 and playing well. We didn’t stop playing hard. Maybe it was because we didn’t have a lot of experience. Our power play stopped working after Game1. I wasn’t happy with how I played. Maybe I should have shot the puck more. But we had a lot of good chances in Game7 and couldn’t score.”

Though Gonchar (one goal, four assists in the playoffs) had hoped to be traded to Toronto, where he spends part of his summers training and for whom his former blue-line partner, Ken Klee, plays, he would be fine with returning to Boston, where the Caps shipped him March3.

“Most of our guys are unsigned, so I really don’t know what to expect, but if the Bruins make a proposal, I would like to talk to them,” Gonchar said. “Boston is a good hockey town.”

So is Ottawa, but right now it might as well be Washington.