PITTSBURGH — A Washington Capitals season again ended in Mellon Arena. Unlike agonizing playoff losses in 1991, 1995 and 2001, yesterday’s 4-3 defeat to the Pittsburgh Penguins came with a sense of relief.
That’s because the Caps (23-46-10-3), who began the season six months ago with a star-studded roster and high hopes, finished it with a talent-stripped lineup and a 4-14-2-1 tailspin.
“It was an awful year, but players always enjoy playing the game, and we played hard for one another,” said defenseman Brendan Witt, the senior Cap on the ice yesterday. “Unfortunately, we’re done now. It’s going to take a couple of days to sink in.”
Washington, which had 92 points last season and made the playoffs, finished with 59 points. The 33-point dropoff is the biggest by an NHL team in seven years and a Caps record. Washington wound up 28th overall, ahead of only Pittsburgh and Chicago, and has a 14.2 percent chance of winning tomorrow’s lottery for the first pick in the June26 entry draft.
“This has been a special group,” Caps coach Glen Hanlon said. “We’ve battled through some situations that they will never experience again, the removal of players 10 minutes before games [because of cost-cutting trades], a lot of things we’ve had to do as an organization. [But] we’ve been in every game except the one against Buffalo at the deadline when we traded away [leader] Mike Grier. This group loves to play and plays hard.”
Trailing 3-2 heading into the third period yesterday, the Caps squandered great chances to tie the game by Bates Battaglia and Witt. Brian Willsie tied the game at 16:01, converting Jeff Halpern’s forced turnover into his 10th goal and Halpern’s team-high 45th point, but Milan Kraft scored the game-winner 1:21 later off pretty passes from Matt Hussey and Matt Bradley.
The Caps played without talented left wing Alexander Semin. The 20-year-old Russian rookie failed to meet the team for its flight from Baltimore to Pittsburgh on Saturday night, and his replacement flight yesterday morning was canceled because of mechanical problems.
Hanlon said he expected Semin to be fined but had yet to talk to him.
Pittsburgh (23-47-8-4 for 58 points), which finished last overall despite a 12-5-3 final quarter of the season, jumped ahead on its second shot yesterday. Aleksey Morozov raced into the left side of the Washington zone, skated behind the net and gave Lasse Pirjeta a perfect pass for a point-blank shot that beat Caps rookie goalie Matt Yeats at 6:11 of the first period.
The Caps tied it at 1-1 with 34.9 seconds left in the period when Battaglia passed out of the left corner of the Pittsburgh zone to Stephen Peat, who flipped the puck over the glove of goalie Sebastien Caron for his fifth goal overall and third in his past 14 games. Pirjeta and Morozov needed just 11 seconds of the second period to put the Penguins back on top, with Morozov feeding Pirjeta for the drive from between the circles that flew past Yeats into the left side of the net.
Ex-Penguin Kip Miller forged another deadlock at 10:31, whipping the rebound of Halpern’s shot past Caron at 10:31 for his ninth goal. However, the tie lasted just 62 seconds. At 11:33, Bradley slid a cross-ice feed from Rico Fata between Yeats’ legs.
The goal was bittersweet for Miller, who had 14 points in the final 19 games. About to be 35 and without a contract for next season in a league well on its way to a lockout, the Caps’ oldest player knows an NHL career that dates to Feb.7, 1991, might be over.
“Hopefully I’ve showed I can still run a power play and be creative, but if I don’t come back, it’s nice to end my career here with a goal,” said Miller, who scored a career-high 19 goals in helping the Penguins reach the 1999 Eastern Conference semifinals.
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