The Washington Capitals have reached middle age, a feat both completely normal and absolutely astonishing. The team has been celebrating its 50th anniversary season this week with a reunion and a concert, with Hall of Famer-to-be Alex Ovechkin delivering care packages to fans who started buying season tickets before he was born, with an alumni game, with Saturday night’s season opener against New Jersey still ahead. It’s good to be 50, particularly now that there’s a Stanley Cup in the house, too.
Column by Barry Svrluga
But in October 1974, on the cusp of their first season, this celebration seemed far-fetched.
“Those were real trying times for the team,” said Yvon Labre, a defenseman on the inaugural Caps team who eventually became the captain. “But I’ve told people: I make no apologies for back then. I’ve always said they were some of the best times of my life.”
Major League Baseball has the 1962 New York Mets, losers of 120 games in their first year of existence. The NFL has the winless expansion Tampa Bay Buccaneers of 1976. And the NHL has the 1974-75 Washington Capitals, who might have been the worst of all.
“My very first game was in Pittsburgh on the 15th of March — my 22nd birthday,” said Blair Stewart, a center acquired in a midseason trade with Detroit. “The first two shifts, it was 2-0 Pittsburgh. I was like, ‘What is going on here?’”
The final score that night: 12-1, Penguins. It was the Capitals’ 12th loss in what would become a 17-game skid — what remains the second-longest losing streak in the 107-year history of the NHL. It joins winless streaks of 0-13-1, 0-9-2 and 0-16-1 covering all parts of the calendar. They never won back-to-back games. Add it all up, and those inaugural Caps went 8-67-5 — the worst record in league history by percentage of points won (.131).
Keep going. Even though they played an 80-game schedule — as opposed to a temporary NHL bump to 84 that later settled at the current 82 — no team has allowed more goals than those Caps’ 446. They allowed 265 more goals than they scored, the worst goal differential in the history of the league. Next worst: the 1992-93 San Jose Sharks and 1993-94 Ottawa Senators at minus-196.
