While Alex Ovechkin has returned to North America for his 21st National Hockey League season, it’s important to remember that while he may be the greatest player in Washington Capitals franchise history, the team’s most important player was acquired 43 years ago this week.
In September 1982, the Capitals hired a new General Manager, David Poile, and the franchise was at a serious crossroads. That summer, the future of the very existence of the Capitals franchise was very much in doubt. In an attempt to boost the floundering franchise, the “Save the Caps” campaign, where fans, personnel, and even opposing players helped try and keep the eight-year-old franchise going, holding telethons and phone banks to try and sell tickets to fans and local businesses.
Had the ticket drive failed, the likelihood is the Capitals would have merged with the Colorado Rockies as they were heading to New Jersey’s Meadowlands to become the Devils. Capitals owner Abe Pollin had run out of patience with the floundering expansion franchise, which had never qualified for the playoffs – despite 16 of 21 teams qualifying – and was pushing hard for ticket sales to cement the team’s place in the Washington sports landscape.
With the team needing a boost on the ice after looking for a boost in attendance, clearly, the pressure was squarely on Poile to make a deal that would make a difference for the franchise. If the 1982-83 version of the Capitals wasn’t successful in the standings or at the gate, there was a decent chance the Caps would have looked to relocate to another city – a fairly commonplace thing of the NHL and WHA in that era.
The Trade
Poile took a great personal risk on September 9, 1982, when he acquired defensemen Rod Langway and Brian Engblom, along with forwards Craig Laughlin and Doug Jarvis from the Montreal Canadiens, and paid a price for the haul, sending team captain Ryan Walter – one of the personal favorites of Pollin – along with Rick Green in exchange to Quebec.
The move was risky, but it gave the Capitals a solid place in the sports landscape in Washington, as well as one of the top players in the NHL.
Langway, who was part of the Habs’ 1979 Stanley Cup team, was a solid blueliner in Quebec but didn’t really have the opportunity that he would have in Washington to be the team’s star. He was named the Capitals’ captain, earned the moniker the “Secretary of Defense” and won the Norris Trophy as the league’s top defenseman his first two seasons in Washington as the team underwent a significant turnaround.
The Effect
Washington got a healthy bump at the gate in Langway’s first season, boosting its average attendance over 12,000 at the 18,130-seat Capital Centre for the first time, and also went 39-25-16 to finish with 94 points and qualify for the postseason for the first time in team history.
Langway was a defensive stalwart, blocking shots with his large shin pads and making sure traffic in front of the Capitals’ crease was cleared, not an easy feat in the rough-and-tumble Patrick Division. While Langway never scored more than 9 goals in a season in a Capitals sweater, his value wasn’t measured in offense, but in the ability to help the Capitals play a solid defensive style that allowed them to qualify for the playoffs every year after his arrival in 1982-83 and every season after that until after he left Washington in 1992-93.
Langway also helped shape the career of another future Hall-of-Famer in Scott Stevens, as the two created one of the toughest defensive corps in the league. While Langway was the one who played a responsible defensive game, the feisty Stevens could deliver devastating hits as well as drop the gloves when needed.
The Epitome Of A Shutdown Defenseman
He was a player ahead of his time, as while the up-tempo league started to migrate to a more defensive style as he reached the end of his career, Washington was an outlier in the high-octane 1980s in trying to play a responsible defensive game and limit scoring chances. As the team’s top defenseman, Langway played against the top scorers in the league, and was able to give the Capitals a solid footing to compete against the league’s top players.
Unfortunately for Langway and the Capitals, they were in the division that not only featured the four-time Stanley Cup champion New York Islanders, but also the Philadelphia Flyers, who reached the Stanley Cup Finals three times during the 1980s, as well as the up-and-coming Pittsburgh Penguins, New York Rangers and Devils, who all found their way to at least one title in the following decade.
With the stiff competition and the divisional playoff structure meaning they regularly faced one of the league’s top teams in the first two rounds, Washington only reached the Wales Conference Final once in 1990. Their depleted bunch was swept by the Boston Bruins, and the team didn’t reach the Stanley Cup Final until years after Langway’s departure in 1998.
Langway’s Legacy
But Langway played an important role for the Capitals as a franchise because he turned a perennial also-ran and gave the team a competitive aura – after all, after missing the playoffs for eight straight seasons as an expansion team, Washington has only missed the playoffs seven times in the 43 years since Langway arrived on the scene in 1982. The Capitals also have only missed the playoffs in multiple seasons one of their time of their history, during which they landed Ovechkin as the top draft pick in 2004.
With the Langway trade, Washington also found success at the gate, averaging over 17,000 per game by the end of the 1980s, with the team playing to near capacity around the team’s first regular-season Patrick Division title in 1988-89 and the first playoff title in 1989-90.
While the Redskins were the most popular team in town during the 1980s, the Capitals found themselves a spot as the solid second franchise, regularly selling out once the NFL season ended in Washington. And instead of being a laughingstock of the NHL as the expansion era team floundered, the team had serious title aspirations during his tenure and was one of the NHL’s top teams.
So, while Ovechkin has certainly been the biggest name ever to pull on a Capitals sweater, it’s important to remember that without the Langway trade, there may not be a Capitals franchise for Ovechkin to play for today.
