Washington Capitals Tickets

The Washington Capitals are a professional ice hockey team based in Washington, D.C.. They play in the National Hockey League. Along with the Kansas City Scouts, the Capitals joined the NHL as an expansion team for the 1974-75 season. With a combined 30 teams between the NHL and the rival World Hockey Association, the talent pool available to stock the new teams was extremely thin. In their first season, the Capitals would set an NHL record for futility, losing 67 of 80 games, and only winning one on the road. The Scouts fared only marginally better, and the expansion was widely seen as having been a mistake. In 1999, the Capitals missed the playoffs. They went on to win back-to-back Southeast Division titles, yet both years lost in the first round to the Pittsburgh Penguins. Yet the Caps scored a major coup in the summer of 2001, landing Jaromír Jágr, one of the best players in the NHL in the 1990s, for a song from a near-bankrupt Pittsburgh team. Despite the new power, the Caps failed to make the playoffs in 2002. In the summer of 2002, the Caps, made even more roster changes, including the signing the highly regarded Robert Lang as a free agent. In the early part of 2004, the Caps unloaded a lot of their high-priced talent in order to save money, but also as an acknowledgment that their attempt to build a contender with high-priced veteran talent had failed. Jaromir Jagr was traded to the Rangers, which was quickly followed by Peter Bondra going to the Ottawa Senators. Not long after Robert Lang was sent to Detroit and Gonchar to the Bruins. The Robert Lang trade marked the first time in the history of the NHL that the league's leading scorer was traded in the middle of the season. The Capitals ended the year 23-46-10 with 59 standings points, their worst season in 26 years. The Capitals finished the 2005-2006 NHL in the cellar of the Southeastern Division again, yet with a slight improvement over the 2003-2004 season with a 29-41-12 record and 70 standings points, good for 27th out of the 30 NHL teams. Yet, the team played close in every game, playing in 42 one-goal games, although losing 2/3rds of those games. Ovechkin's rookie season exceeded the hype, as his 52 goals and 106 points both ranked third all-time among NHL rookies and he led all 2005-2006 NHL rookies in goals, points, power-play goals and shots. He finished third overall in the NHL in scoring and tied for third in goals and his 425 shots not only led the league and set an NHL rookie record, but also was the fourth-highest total in NHL history. Ovechkin’s point total was the second best in Washington Capitals history and his goal total was tied for third in franchise history. Many longtime Capitals had career years with Dainius Zubrus netting 57 points, Halpern having a career-best 33 assists, Matt Pettinger put in a career-best 20 goal-38 point effort and seven others on the relatively young team topped 20 points for the first time. Two notable landmarks were also hit by Capitals, as the team's longest tenured Capital, Olaf Kolzig won his 250th game in goal and Andrew Cassels became the 204th player to play 1,000 games, although he did not finish out his season with the team.