Who You Gonna Call?

Well, here we are.  The place any team would love to be. The place any fan base would love to be.  The Washington Capitals are one win from their first trip to the Conference Finals in seventeen years.  One win from Alex Ovechkin's first venture beyond the second round.  With Wednesday night's victory the Caps built a commanding (legally required to use that cliche there) three games to one series lead over the hated Rangers.  But Caps fans know well the perils of 3-1 series lead.  We have borne witness to blown leads and choke jobs.  We have watched helplessly as the likes of Lemieux and LaFontaine, Jagr and Halak, have yanked our hockey  hearts from our chests and mercilessly ground them under their skate boot.  Out of two hundred seventy occurrences of  a team holding a 3-1 series lead,  only ten percent of the teams have blown that lead.  Four of those twenty-seven teams,the most in NHL history, have been the Capitals.  Four times I have watched as a team unraveled, as history repeated itself, as a series slipped away almost cosmically as if it were a fate preordained by the hockey gods.

Don't get me wrong; I haven't fired up the Doomsday Siren yet. Yet.  But I am looking for the keys just in case.  Such is the life of Caps fans.  The worry reflex has kicked in.  Muscle memory instructs us to expect the worst.  We are wary when things are riding too high.  I'll watch Game 5 through my fingers.  A Game 6 would elicit the paces of an expectant father.  A Game 7 would tighten sphincters across the region.  I have seen what can happen and it's not pretty.  It is hard to shake the feeling that New York has us right where they want us.  

So, why can't I get my head around the idea that these might not be the same ol' Caps?  Maybe because, unlike the opening round, I have been able to watch precious little of this series.  In fact, I have seen less than twenty minutes of game action combined through four games (fortunately, a few of those minutes included Joel Ward's Game One buzzer-beater).  I can't really speak to how the Caps are playing.  Everything I read, hear and see in the highlights seems to indicate, carrying over from the first round, that they feel "different".  Quotes from the locker room indicate the players are quite serious about finshing the Rangers.  Unfortunately, this is typically where teams of the past, and Ovi's Caps, let up.  Whether in an individual game or in playoff series, the Caps tend to let teams off the mat.  The Rangers are good.  Lundqvist is good. Good enough to come back and win this series.  That's why I worry.  However, in Round One optimism was my vow and a Ghost of Playoffs past was banished.  Once again, I'm willing to let optimism be my spirit guide.  Somebody call Ray Parker Jr.  For now, I ain't afraid of no (playoff) ghosts.