WASHINGTON (AP) The Capitals will hold their Stanley Cup parade on Tuesday
Martin Frk Jersey , riding down Constitution Avenue to the National Mall to celebrate the first championship in franchise history.The team announced
details of the parade and rally Friday shortly before players, coaches and staff
returned from their clinching Game 5 victory in Las Vegas. The parade will begin
at 11 a.m. Eastern at Constitution and 17th Streets NW and move east to pass the
Washington Monument to the National Mall at 7th Street where a stage will be set
up.For a city known for parades, inaugural and otherwise, it’s the first for a
championship team in the major four North American professional sports leagues
since the NFL’s Redskins in 1992.The team is encouraging fans to take public
transportation and bring plenty of water.—More Stanley Cup coverage:
https://apnews.com/tag/StanleyCupFinals Dan Bouchard can appreciate, better than
most, the Miracle in the Desert.He was a goalie for the expansion Atlanta Flames
back in the 1970s, so he knows how difficult it is to build a competitive team
from scratch.”It’s astonishing what they’ve done in Vegas,” said Bouchard, who
still lives in the Atlanta area, when reached by phone this week. ”I think it’s
the greatest thing to happen to hockey since the Miracle on Ice,” he added,
referring to the seminal U.S. upset of the mighty Soviet Union at the 1980
Olympics. ”It’s that good.”Indeed, Vegas has set a new norm for expansion teams
in all sports. No longer will it be acceptable to enter a league with a squad
full of dregs and take your lumps for a few years, all while fans willingly pay
big-league prices to watch an inferior product.The Golden Knights have come up
with a stunning new template for how this expansion thing can be done.They
romped to the Pacific Division title with 51 wins. In the opening round of the
playoffs, they finished off the Los Angeles Kings in four straight games ,
casting aside a franchise that has a pair of Stanley Cup titles this decade
while becoming the first expansion team in NHL history to sweep a postseason
series in its debut year.Imagine how storied franchises in Montreal and Detroit
and Edmonton must be feeling right about now.They didn’t even make the
playoffs.From Bouchard’s perspective, it’s all good. Vegas’ success right out of
the starting gate will make everyone raise their game in the years to come.”This
will wake up the teams that are sitting on $90 million budgets and not doing
anything,” he said. ”People will say, `If Vegas can do it, we can do it.’ That’s
a paradigm shift in the game.”When one considers how NHL expansion teams have
fared over the years, the Vegas story becomes even more compelling.The Golden
Knights are the first new team in the NHL’s modern era to have a winning record
in their inaugural season, a period that began in 1967 and encompasses 26 new
franchises (including one, the ill-fated California Seals, who are no longer
around).Only six other first-year teams have made the playoffs – and that
includes four that were assured of postseason berths in the landmark 1967
expansion. You see, when the NHL finally broke out of its Original Six format,
doubling in size to a dozen teams, it placed all the new franchises in the same
division, with the top four getting postseason berths even with sub-.500
records.Until the Golden Knights came along
http://www.officialredwings.com/authentic-adidas-mike-green-jersey , the Florida Panthers were the gold standard for NHL expansion. They finished one
game below .500 in their first season (1993-94) and missed the playoffs by a
single point. In Year 3, they had their first winning record and made it all the
way to the Stanley Cup final, though they were swept by the Colorado
Avalanche.That remains the closest the Panthers have come to winning a title.In
Sin City, the wait for a championship figures to be much shorter. Heck, the
Golden Knights might do it this year.They’re 12 wins away from hoisting the
Stanley Cup in a city that has always had a soft spot for long shots.”We’re
still a few wins away from this being a great story,” said goalie Marc-Andre
Fleury, a key contributor to the Golden Knights success.Even now, it seems like
a bit of dream to coach Gerard Gallant, who thankfully will be remembered for
something other than getting left at the curb to hail his own cab after being
fired by the Panthers.”When this all started in October, we just wanted to
compete,” Gallant said. ”Now we’re going to the second round of the playoffs.
It’s unreal.”For sure, the Golden Knights wound up with a much more talented
roster than most expansion teams – partly through astute planning, partly
through getting access to better players as a reward for doling out a staggering
$500 million expansion fee, which was a more than six-fold increase over the $80
million required of Minnesota and Columbus to enter the league in 2000.The
expansion draft netted a top-line goalie in Fleury, who helped Pittsburgh win
three Stanley Cups; center Jonathan Marchessault, a 30-goal scorer in Florida
who was surprisingly left exposed by the Panthers; and winger James Neal, who
had scored more than 20 goals in all nine of his NHL seasons. It also provided a
solid group of defensemen: Colin Miller, Nate Schmidt, Deryk Engelland and
Brayden McNabb.In addition, the Golden Knights wisely nabbed young Swedish
center William Karlsson, who hadn’t done much in Columbus but became Vegas’
leading scorer with 43 goals and 35 assists.”They’ve got some top centers.
They’ve got some real good defense. They’ve got good goaltending,” Bouchard
observed. ”They went right down the middle. That’s how the built it. Then they
complemented it with the fastest guys they could get their hands on. They went
for speed.”Previous expansion teams didn’t have it nearly as good.Bouchard
actually played on one of the better first-year teams when the Flames entered
the league in 1972. They were in playoff contention much of the season and
finished with more points than four other teams in the 16-team league, including
the storied Toronto Maple Leafs.But that was a team that had to struggle for
every win. The Flames had only three 20-goal scorers and were largely carried by
their two young goalies, Bouchard and Phil Myre.”We didn’t have a bona fide
30-goal scorer,” Bouchard recalled. ”We had a lot of muckers.”That was then.The
Golden Knights have shown how it should be done.If expansion teams are going to
fork over enormous fees for the chance to play, they should have access to a
much better pool of potential players.They should have a chance to win right
away.That way, everyone wins.—Paul Newberry is a sports columnist for The
Associated Press. Write to him at pnewberry(at)ap.org or at
www.twitter.com/pnewberry1963 . His work can be found at
https://apnews.com/search/paul newberry—AP Sports Writer Beth Harris in Los
Angeles contributed to this column.—
