We are up to the letter “L” in our look back at the
Washington Capitals All-Alphabet Franchise Teams. This one represents each
decade in the history of the franchise.
Regular Season (with Capitals): 10 seasons, 616 games, 125-172-297,
plus-1
Playoffs (with Capitals): 5 seasons, 51 games, 9-21-30,
plus-1
When the Washington Capitals embarked on the Great
Selloff/Rebuild, 2003-2008, they had to part with a number of veterans, some of
them with deep roots in the community and wide following among Caps fans. No
Capital had a more devoted fan following than forward Peter Bondra. When he was
traded on February 18, 2004 to the Ottawa Senators after spending 14 seasons
with the club, fans and management, as well as the player were choked up about
it. It almost seemed an
afterthought that the return was a second round draft pick in the 2005 entry
draft and a prospect forward by the name of Brooks Laich.*
Ten years later, and Laich is a fixture with the club.
Perhaps not to the extent Bondra was, but Laich is widely viewed as a core
player for the current edition of the Capitals. Laich, a sixth round pick
(193rd overall) of the Senators in the 2001 entry draft, who played four games
for the Caps after the trade in 2004, came out from the other side of the
2004-2005 lockout to establish a spot on the roster immediately. With 73 games
played for the Caps that season, Laich embarked on a seven-year run in which he
missed a total of 22 games, only four in the last five years of that run.
In those last five years of that stretch, from 2007-2008
through 2011-2012, Laich averaged 20-27-47, plus-4 per season. In
2011-2012 he finished 11th in the voting for the Selke Trophy as the league’s
best defensive forward with more votes than Henrik Zetterberg or Jordan Staal.
One thing at which Laich displayed an adept touch during
this span was scoring power play goals. In this five-year stretch, Laich was
38th overall in power play goals scored with 38. While this might sound like an
unremarkable ranking, it was more power play goals than teammates Nicklas Backstrom (35) and
Alexander Semin (34).
Then came the 2012-2013 lockout. Like many players, Laich decided to play in
Europe while the league and the players association worked out their
differences. On September 28, 2012 he
signed with the Kloten Flyers in Swiss National League A. He lasted 19 games (going 6-12-18 in the process)
when a groin injury ended his further participation in Swiss hockey. At the time it appeared as if Laich would miss a week or two at the start of the
abbreviated NHL season that started in January. Instead, it was an injury that bedeviled
Laich, the club, and Capitals fans for more than a year.
Laich played in only nine regular season games and no
playoff games in that abbreviated 2012-2013 season, recording only one goal and
four points. He was in the lineup to
begin the 2013-2014 season, but the uncooperative nature of his injury
relentlessly peeled games off his season resume – 11 games in late November and
early December, three more in late December, a game in early February, single
games on March 6th and 11th. March 14th
would be the last game in which Laich appeared in the 2013-2014 season, playing
only 12 minutes in a 4-3 Capitals win over the Vancouver Canucks. Laich’s season was over after 51 games. Three days later he was in St. Louis to
undergo a surgical procedure to address the injury.
At 31 years of age, Brooks Laich should be in the prime of
his career with the Capitals. Instead,
there is uncertainty about his health, whether he will return to being that
player he was for a five year stretch before the 2012-2013 lockout, and his
role (he could play anywhere from third line center to first line left wing and
spots in-between). He is not a Peter
Bondra (who is?), but he has been a very versatile player for the Caps, capable
of playing a number of positions and in any situation. That merits his getting a spot on Team L.
Regular Season (with Capitals): 2 seasons, 145 games,
51-92-143, plus-14
Playoffs (with Capitals): 1 season, 6 games, 2-1-3, plus-3
If I told you that Robert Lang ranked seventh in Washington
Capitals history in points per game (minimum: 125 games played with the club),
would you believe me?
Well, he doesn’t. He
ranks sixth. Here’s the list:
- Dennis Maruk: 1.26
- Alex Ovechkin: 1.20
- Jaromir Jagr: 1.06
- Mike Gartner: 1.04
- Nicklas Backstrom: 1.00
- Robert Lang: 0.99
Lang is fourth in assists per game (0.63) with only Adam
Oates (0.75), Backstrom (0.74), and Maruk (0.73) ahead of him. Unfortunately, he did it for only 145 games
with the Caps, the last 63 of them played for the 2003-2004 team that was sold
for scrap with the idea of rebuilding from the bottom up.
Lang came to the Caps in what, in hindsight, looks like an
“in for a dime, in for a dollar” strategy of roster management. In July 2001 the Caps traded for Pittsburgh
Penguin forward Jaromir Jagr and his $10.3 million salary in 2001-2002 (which
the Caps promptly extended into a seven year – with an option for an eighth
year – deal paying him $11 million a year).
When Jagr had a disappointing (by his standards) first season with the
Caps, the club went out and looked for a center to complement him.
Lang was coming off a four-year stretch with Pittsburgh in
which he recorded 94 goals and 239 points.
That he was Jagr’s teammate seemed to make him more attractive as a
target. The Caps signed him to a
five-year/$25 million contract on the first day of free agency in July
2002. His first year with the Caps was
altogether what might have been expected as far as his numbers went: 23-42-69
while appearing in all 82 games. That
was fine as far as it went, but it did not have the added benefit of improving
Jagr’s production, who actually saw a drop in points (from 79 to 77) from his
first season with the Caps.
The following season, Lang was better. The team, unfortunately, was not. Washington won two games in October, five in
November, and four in December. Their
season was going nowhere. Meanwhile,
Lang was putting up big numbers: nine points (10 games) in October, 22 points
(in 14 games, in all of which he recorded points) in November, nine points (in 14 games) in December.
With the Caps about to embark on a clearance sale of epic
proportions, there was the matter of what to do with Lang. He was at or near the top of the points
race. He was their most productive, and
thus most marketable asset.
The Caps pulled the trigger on a trade on February 27th,
with Lang leading the league in points (74 in 63 games). Washington traded Lang to the Detroit Red
Wings for a prospect forward (Tomas Fleischmann), a first round pick in the
2004 entry draft, and a fourth round pick in the 2006 entry draft.
The Red Wings might have been congratulating themselves on
not having to part with a roster player in a trade for the league’s leading
scorer. However just four games into his
new setting, Lang suffered a rib injury.
He played in only six of the Wings’ last 18 games, going 1-4-5. The Caps would use their first round draft pick in 2004 to select Mike Green.
He played two more seasons with Detroit, then signed with
Chicago as a free agent. After one
season with the Blackhawks, Lang was traded to Montreal for a second round draft
pick. A year later he signed as a free
agent with the Phoenix Coyotes , the 2009-2010 being his last season in the
NHL.
It took Robert Lang a while to find his scoring groove. Parts of four seasons in Los Angeles, a few
games in Boston, and his early work in Pittsburgh gave little evidence that the
seventh round pick of the 1990 entry draft (by the Kings) was going to be a
scorer. But he did find that scoring
groove in his later years in Pittsburgh that started the most productive phase
of his career, one that included his brief stay in Washington.
Robert Lang, like Geoff Courtnall a decade before him, was a
player traded at the pinnacle of his career due to circumstances (although the
circumstances in Lang’s case were not of his doing). Those circumstances, as was the case with
Courtnall, cut short what might have been a long and productive career with the
Capitals. As it was, his performance in
his brief stay in Washington still gets him a seat on the Team L bus.
Regular Season (with Capitals): 6 seasons, 428 games,
110-173-283, plus-22
Playoffs (with Capitals): 5 seasons, 27 games, 6-4-10, even
Washington Capitals fans of current vintage know Craig
Laughlin only as the smart (if occasionally goofy) sidekick to Joe Beninati in
Capitals television broadcasts. His
Canadian-accented nasally voice is instantly recognizable (and no doubt
endearing to Caps fans). What fans of
today’s team might not realize is that Laughlin was part of one of the biggest
trades, if not the biggest trade in team history.
In July 1982 the Washington Capitals were on the brink of
being moved or dissolved. A “Save the Caps” campaign was begun, and then owner Abe Pollin decided in late August to
keep the team in Washington
A week later, the team named David Poile
as general manager. Only 32 years old at
the time, he jumped into the job with both feet.
Barely a week after he was named general manager, Poile
trade Ryan Walter and Rick Green – one who was once a second overall draft pick
(Walter), the other a first overall draft pick (Green) – to Montreal for Rod
Langway, Doug Jarvis, Brian Engblom, and a former 10th round draft pick of the
Canadiens who just wrapped up his rookie season in the NHL: Craig Laughlin.
Laughlin fit right in.
It was not so much his scoring, although that part of his game seemed
quite underrated (he finished seventh on the club in scoring in his first
season with the Caps, his first full season in the NHL). He was a hardworking, tight checking sort who
harassed players all over the ice. He
would eventually be teamed with Alan Haworth and Greg Adams to become the
“Plumbers Line” for their hardworking style of play (and with a nod to the
“Plumbers” of the Nixon administration, being a DC team and all).
In Laughlin’s five full seasons in Washington he was one of
only five players to record at least 100 goals (he had 105), and he was fourth
overall in points over those years (273), behind only Mike Gartner , Bobby
Carpenter, and Dave Christian. Laughlin
was third among the Caps over those five seasons in power play goals (38),
trailing only Gartner and Carpenter. He
was also remarkably durable over those seasons, missing a total of only 12
games.
In the 1987-1988 season, Laughlin’s production withered, no
doubt a product of the effects of knee injury he suffered in the previous
spring’s playoff series against the New York Islanders. He scored two goals in the Caps’ second game
of the season, and then he went his next 21 games with just one goal to show
for it. Things did not improve. Finally, on February 9th, with Laughlin stuck
at five goals and ten points in 40 games, he was traded to the Los Angeles
Kings for Grant Ledyard. He played out
that season with the Kings, then signed with his hometown Toronto Maple Leafs
for the 1988-1989 season that would be his last in the NHL. He played one more season, that with EV
Landshut in West Germany before leaving the game at the age of 32 after the
1989-1990 season.
Out of lemons come lemonade, and Laughlin found a recipe for
that when he was injured in the Islander playoff series in 1987, getting the broadcasting bug.
That is how most Caps fans probably know and remember him today. But on some of the best teams in franchise
history, Laughlin was a vital element.
He deserves to skate on the right side of Team L.
Regular Season (with Capitals): 11 seasons, 726 games,
25-177-202, plus-117
Playoffs (with Capitals): 10 seasons, 78 games, 2-16-18,
plus-2
In the first 29 years in which the Norris Trophy was awarded
to the NHL’s top defenseman, four defensemen won the award in at least two
consecutive years – Doug Harvey, Pierre Pilote, Bobby Orr, and Denis
Potvin. When Rod Langway won the award
for the second consecutive year in 1984, he became the fifth defenseman in NHL
history to accomplish this feat.
What made Langway’s achievement more impressive is that looking
at the post-expansion era of the NHL and the defensemen who won the award at
least twice – Orr, Potvin, and Larry Robinson – all of them recorded at least
11 goals in their trophy-winning years, and with the exception of Orr’s first
trophy win in 1968, all of them recorded at least 64 points. In Langway’s two wins he recorded a total of
12 goals and 65 points.
Langway was a defensive defenseman in an extraordinary
sense. That was not all. He might be the single most important player
in franchise history. The means by which
he came to the Caps was by the trade described above. The Caps were in jeopardy of folding or
moving, and shortly after owner Abe Pollin decided to keep the team in
Washington, just-hired general manager David Poile made the trade that brought
Langway to Washington.
Given the Capitals’ history of poor defense (in their first
eight seasons they allowed 4.30 goals per game while the league average was
3.54), Langway was arguably the centerpiece of the trade. Although he was still only 25 years with four
years of NHL experience with the Montreal Canadiens, he finished in the top ten
in Norris Trophy voting in each of his last two seasons with the Canadiens, and
he was a member of a Stanley Cup winning team in Montreal in 1979.
What he was not was a scorer. In 11 seasons with the Capitals, Langway
never hit the ten-goal mark (he only scored a total of 25 in 11 seasons) and
never recorded as many as 35 points in a season. Nevertheless, he was a “plus” player in each
of his first ten seasons in Washington (averaging plus-13). He might not have been scoring, but opponents
weren’t either.
The low scoring output did not lessen the appreciation for
his game. He was a first team all-star
twice with the Caps, a second team all-star once, and received all-star team
votes in each of his first seven seasons in Washington overall. In addition to the two Norris Trophies he
won, he finished in the top-five on two other occasions. He finished in the top-five in Hart Trophy
voting as the league’s most valuable player three times.
He was also durable, especially given his physical style of
play. In his first seven seasons in
Washington, Langway missed only 35 games (five per season). There was, however, a post-season injury he
suffered that had significant impacts on the Capitals’ fortunes. After a thrilling seven-game win over the
Philadelphia Flyers in the first round of the 1988 Stanley Cup playoffs, the Caps faced the New Jersey Devils in
the second round. Late in the third
period of Game 1, what would be a 3-1 Capitals win, Langway and the Devils’ Pat
Verbeek were tangled up behind the Capitals’ net. As Verbeek described it, “I was trying to
prevent him from cutting back on me. I
stuck my leg out to keep him from getting position on me. The toe of my skate cut him in the back of
the calf…” The skate left a three-inch cut to the back
of Langway’s leg, and he headed to the bench immediately, trailing blood on the
ice all the way. He was treated, but he
had to wear an immobilizing cast for 7-10 days, leaving him unavailable to the
Caps for the duration of the series. The
Caps promptly lost Games 2 and 3 by a combined 15-6 margin (the Devils enjoyed
20 power plays over those two games), and the Caps lost the series to New
Jersey in seven games.
Langway returned to play in 76 games for the Caps the
following season, but the wear and tear on his body started catching up with
him in the 1989-1990 season. He played
in only 58 games that season and did not record a goal (strangely, the only
season in his career to that point in which he did not score a goal). In 1990-1991 it was 56 games played. He rebounded to play in 64 games the next
season and record 13 points (his highest point total in three years), but he
was not the dominating defenseman of the mid-1980’s.
In early November of the 1992-1993 season, Langway and general manager David Poile met, Poile asking Langway to assume a part-time
role with the club.
He played in only 21 games that season, finishing with no points and a
minus-13. The manner in which the game
evolved around him was reflected by the fact that in that 1992-1993 season,
three other Capitals defensemen – Kevin Hatcher, Al Iafrate, and Sylvain Cote –
finished with 20 or more goals.
That was Langway’s last season in the NHL. After sitting out the 1993-1994 season, he
played briefly with the Richmond Renegades of the ECHL, then spent a season
with the San Francisco Spiders of the IHL.
In 1997-1998 Langway appeared in ten games for the Providence Bruins of
the AHL to close out his professional resume.
Former teammate Craig Laughlin said of Langway, “[He] was
the same as Wayne Gretzky, but in a defensive mode… He killed the penalties
with the best of them. The way he pinned a guy to the boards…it’s an art. He
doesn’t let the guy back into the play.”
Unfortunately, there was no statistic, advanced or otherwise, available back
then to reflect that skill. But to the
extent one could trust their eyes, when Langway checked an opponent, he stayed
checked. Rare was the battle along the
boards he lost; he was an expert at neutralizing any advance from that spot on
the ice. He was, as we noted above, more
than that. He might be the most
consequential Capital in team history, in no small part the reason we still
have hockey in Washington. Team L has
its captain and its stopper in Rod Langway.
Regular Season (with Capitals): 7 seasons, 334 games,
12-84-96, minus-89
Playoffs (with Capitals): none
If there has been a hockey player in NHL history to have
played under more adversity than Yvon Labre, we’d like to meet him. Then again, maybe not. Although he did not play in every game for
the Caps and the Pittsburgh Penguins over his nine year career, the teams on
which he played had a combined record of 186-412-118. If you were to convert that to an 82-game
season, it’s a record of 21-47-14.
It started for Labre in 1969 when he was taken in the fourth
round (38th overall) by the Pittsburgh Penguins in the 1969 amateur
draft. After a year with the Baltimore
Clippers of the AHL, he made the jump to the NHL in 1970-1971, playing in 21
games for the Penguins. After spending
all of two seasons in the minors with the Hershey Bears, Labre saw limited NHL
action in the 1973-1974 season – 16 games with Pittsburgh.
Whatever the Penguins saw in Labre, they were not
sufficiently impressed to protect him from exposure in the expansion draft of
June 1974. It was there that his career
with the Caps began. He dressed for 76
games with the Caps in his first full NHL season, and laboring for the worst
team in NHL history (8-67-5), he finished fourth on the club (first among
defensemen) in scoring with 27 points.
He also led the team in penalty minutes by a wide margin – 182 minutes
to Mike Bloom’s 84.
Labre played in all 80 games the following season, once more
topping 20 points (2-20-22). That,
however, might have been the pinnacle of his Caps’ career. Knee problems started to eat into his playing
time. He would play in only 178 of 400
games over the next five seasons, but he was still as tough a player (428
penalty minutes in those 178 games) as he was in those first two seasons with
the club.
Unfortunately, his hard work and dedication was not
rewarded. In none of his seven seasons
with the Capitals did they make the playoffs, only twice did they win more than
25 games.
In 1980-1981 injuries limited Labre to 25 games. It would be his last in the NHL. Still, he would be the last of the inaugural
1974-1975 team to skate for the club. His effort in the face of misfortune was not
unappreciated. In November 1981 Labre
had his number “7” retired by the club, the first of four numbers to be retired
by the Caps. The team would not retire
another number for more than 16 years.
Stars and winners get a lot of ink and a lot of
accolades. But in his own way, Yvon
Labre was both for this franchise, the embodiment of what being a professional
means. He has a special place on Team L.
Regular Season (with Capitals): 3 seasons, 64 games,
27-27-5, 3.51, .871
Playoffs (with Capitals): 2 seasons, 11 games, 4-5, 3.46,
.874
By the time Mike Liut pulled on a Capitals sweater he
already built a resume as one of the top goalies in the league, having won 267
games over 12-plus seasons with the St. Louis Blues and Hartford Whalers. His resume included a first team all-star
berth, a second-team all-star spot, a Pearson Award (now the Ted Lindsay Award) as the league’s outstanding player, and six top-ten finishes
in the voting for the Vezina Trophy. In
1981 he finished second to Wayne Gretzky for the Hart Trophy as the league’s
most valuable player.
He arrived in Washington in March 1990 in a trade that sent
Yvon Corriveau to Hartford. He had a
fine home stretch that season for the Caps in terms of his own play (2.13 goal
against average, .922 save percentage), although he didn’t have much luck, a
4-4-0 record in eight appearances. He
matched that 4-4 record in the post season as the Caps advanced to the
conference final for the first time in franchise history.
Things took a bumpy road after that for Liut. In 1990-1991 he appeared in 35 games but had
just a 13-16-3 record. His 3.73 goals
against average was among the worst of his career. Things were not any better the following
season. Stubborn back problems limited
him to 21 appearances in which he was 10-7-2 with a 3.74 goals against average. His last appearance in that 1991-1992 season
was on February 4th against the Buffalo Sabres, one in which he
allowed seven goals on 43 shots. It was
the second time in five appearances in which he allowed seven goals and it
completed a consecutive games total of 12 goals on 67 shots. He might have been willing, but his body was
betraying him. It was his last season in
the NHL.
Mike Liut came to the Caps to provide a measure of stability
and steady production in goal that seemed lacking with the club. It was often said that it was goaltending
that failed the Caps in the end in the 1980’s when they never could seem to get
over the hump of the first or second round of the playoffs. Liut might have provided that – he did play
on that first ever conference finals club – but physically the tank was running
low. Still, he did make contributions to
those clubs of the early 1990s and gets the call in goal for Team L.
Team L certainly has both an old school and a new school look to it, reaching back
to the early days of the franchise and some of its best days while adding some punch from teams of more recent vintage. There is a grittiness and toughness about
this team that others would find difficult to play against. They would, in their own way, be pretty
entertaining to watch.
* In one of the more bizarre turns of this tale, Bondra was
offered a contract in the late summer of 2005 by the Capitals after his
contract with the Senators (originally signed as a Capital) ran out after the
2003-2004 season. The team was reported to have offered Bondra a one-year deal
at $1.5 million; Bondra countered with a proposal for an additional year and
more money.
The teams were not able to agree on terms of a deal, and Bondra signed as a free
agent with the Atlanta Thrashers.
