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Scrappy George McPhee, still fighting the good fight for the Washington Capitals
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"George, come on," Patrick remembered telling him. "Just see where it goes."
Where it went was a $20,000 fine, a one-month suspension, and what McPhee considers a stain on his record.
The 52-year-old version of McPhee would never do such a thing, he said.
"Just getting old," he said softly.
Drafting a superstar
The move that defines the current Capitals was all but a no-brainer: selecting young Russian winger Alex Ovechkin with the first pick in the 2004 draft. To surround Ovechkin, the Capitals have assembled a core of talented young players, many of them draft picks executed by McPhee and his scouting staff.
With Ovechkin, twice the winner of the Hart Trophy as the league's MVP, the Capitals have attracted legions of fans, many of whom don't remember how hard it was to get to this point, where Verizon Center is sold out nightly and the team is considered a Stanley Cup contender.
All of which made the loss to the Montreal Canadiens in the first round of the playoffs last spring even more difficult to take. If the hours before regular season games aren't fun for McPhee, imagine the hours after an excruciating Game 7 loss to a No. 8 seed in a series in which your team had a three-games-to-one lead.
"You're looking for a trap door to hide from everybody for a while, and sort of get over this," McPhee said a couple of days after the season ended.
That process wasn't easy.
"It was a very difficult summer, maybe the most difficult ever," McPhee said this week.
Yet that night last April, when he left the arena following the loss to the Canadiens, McPhee thought back: What could I have done differently? His conclusion: Nothing.
Maybe the fighter in him would have wanted to dismantle the team. The intellectual, the analyst, knows better.
"You have to get across to the players: The time is now," he said.
On this, the figurative night before Christmas, that's how George McPhee thinks. Forget the angst of the games to come. His anticipation of the upcoming season isn't blind optimism. It's based on his life in hockey.
"You fantasize about what a group like this can accomplish," he said.
A grown, hardened man dreaming like a little boy. That, surely, is fun.
svrlugab@washpost.com
