Stanley Cup 2013: “It’s wartime”

Sixteen men led their teams into the post-season. Eight weeks later, only one was standing.

Tap. Tap. Tap… Jonathan Toews stands at the top of the circle in a red sweater… Tap. Tap. Tap.

It’s an urgent request of the stick, and the puck is passed quickly. His body shifts, twisting his torso to fire at a wide open net. Like he’s done thousands of times before. The blade hits the ice and the shaft of his stick whiplashes. Crack. The puck fires wide, smacking off the glass. He takes another pass… Smack, wide and high. Another… it rings off the post. Again… he scuffs the ice and the puck bounces and bobbles to the net. He turns back to the net and sighs. The Chicago Blackhawks are a single series away from winning the Stanley Cup and their captain can’t score a goal, even in practice.

He has done everything you could ask of a leader through the first three rounds of the NHL playoffs. He’s forechecked and backchecked and bodychecked. He’s rallied his team when it faced elimination and answered for his failings. But there is no place to hide for a captain gone cold. If the Blackhawks fall, he’ll carry the blame. The best two-way forward in the game, wilting when needed most.

The team can see him breaking and hides him from the press—leading to arguments and bickering between Hawks PR and the media. His teammates call him out, imploring him to put his frustrations aside, to stop heaping pressure on himself and just play his game. But he can’t. Because this is all that matters. This is all there is for hockey players.

A fifth puck saucers his way. He stops it, skates to the hash marks and flicks it into the empty net. He slams his Sherwood hard on the ice, hangs his head and skates away.

It begins and ends with chosen men. Thirty among 921. By May, just 16 remained. The captains are superstars and role players. Some are vocal, others reserved. Some are giants among men, others smaller than you. The youngest is 25 and already a champion; the oldest, Cup-less at 40. In the post-season, six were European, six Canadian and four American. All at different points in their careers, all defining what it means to wear the team logos on their chests.

They work in different cities and captain different teams with vastly different styles. But 15 of these 16 men will end up in the same place—grim and unshaven, humbled in front of an advancing front of microphones and cameras, of harsh spotlights and uncomfortable questions. “What went wrong?” they’ll be asked, and every answer will be different, the explanations and excuses varying as wildly as a puck careening over bad ice. These are their stories—of the 15 captains who failed, and the one left hoisting the Cup over his head.

“I just explained to you that I made a wrong decision,” Dion Phaneuf said gruffly. He wore a grey Nike T-shirt, blotched with sweat, and a thin gold chain around his neck. He pulled a white Maple Leafs cap over his retreating hair and tilted his stubbly chin toward his chest—staring down into the microphones hovering around him. “What more do you want me to say?” That after a game-four loss—Toronto’s second at home—in which the captain’s mistake—an ill-timed pinch and attempted bodycheck— directly resulted in the winning goal. That after his actress girlfriend had already gone viral on social media for a perceived slight of his goalie. That after his team had fallen behind Boston 3–1 in the series. All of that before the final, agonizing goal would cross the line.

The Leafs had not seen the playoffs in nine years. Nearly a decade filled with tough questions and few answers. For the past three seasons, Phaneuf had faced those questions. He can come off as irritable and deliberately difficult, likely a mechanism to cope with the pressure of Toronto’s hockey market. He always takes a few moments to collect his brief answers. And on the surface, it’s sometimes hard to see Phaneuf’s role as leader as anything more than a penchant for playing DJ and the “C” many feel ex-GM Brian Burke mistakenly placed on his sweater. It’s a reputation he’s battled since being named captain 26 games into his Maple Leafs career.

But Phaneuf’s teammates stand by him—swearing he’s a friendly guy, easy to get along with, always in on a joke. He plays two roles: one for the media and one for the team. He’s not an overly vocal leader, but he’s quick to step in and take blame.

Four nights later, Phaneuf found redemption back in Toronto for game six through another risky pinch that ended, this time, with a tip-in goal. He turned and roared, thrusting both hands in the air and then leaping into the arms of the similarly maligned Phil Kessel. The Leafs held on to win 2–1 and force a game seven. In the dressing room, after the clichés and the cameras, Phaneuf stood around chatting with a couple of reporters asking if the tip was a lucky break for a defenceman. He insisted that it was on purpose—something he’d been working on in practice. He was almost giddy. This Leafs team had done more than any other in a decade.

Any sense of joy disappeared 24 hours later, after Toronto’s epic collapse in game seven. The young Leafs blew a three-goal lead with fewer than 11 minutes to go, before Patrice Bergeron finished them off in overtime. In the visitors’ dressing room afterwards, reporters once again crowded around Phaneuf looking for answers. Once again, emotion trumped rehearsed captainese. He stammered through, vacillating between “it’s extremely disappointing” and saying nice things about the Bruins. Finally, he ended with, “This is probably one of the toughest losses I’ve had in pro hockey.” The defeat was devastating, but put in context, the series was an important victory for Phaneuf and a young team that suddenly has the Toronto faithful believing again. They took the eventual Cup finalists to within minutes of defeat.

There was a similar resurgence of faith in Nassau County this season, as the New York Islanders put five years of early tee times behind them. Hart Trophy nominee John Tavares led the franchise to the playoffs for the first time since he became its face on draft day in 2009. But as the 35-year-old captain of a team that belongs to its 22-year-old star, Mark Streit served as crucial support to help establish the young core. As the Islanders proved an ominous challenge for the young lions of the top-seeded Pittsburgh Penguins, the attention went to Tavares, while Streit quietly guided the team. In game four, he had two goals and three points to help knot the series at two. Naturally, Tavares scored the winner. In the Islanders’ blue and orange dressing room, the cameras and microphones always found Tavares first at his stall in the far corner. Meanwhile, Streit sat a few spots down on the right, tucked between Matt Carkner and Lubomir Visnovsky. The defenceman with curly brown hair, a long nose and a small mouth, surrounded by a bristly playoff goatee, was comfortable with his role as the team’s quiet leader. Playing in Europe for years, Streit wasn’t drafted to the NHL until he was 26. He joined the Islanders in 2008 and became the first Swiss-born captain in league history in 2011. He was always reserved and reliable—patiently waiting for the media throng to pass from Tavares to him, never once skipping out on the duty early—and was a unifying personality on a close-knit team. The sepia-toned photos of each Islander hanging above their stalls evoke a sense of history and pride. New York fell in six to the Penguins, but those two playoffs wins signalled the arrival of the Islanders’ next generation. It’s a future Streit will have no part in. The free agent to be was moved to Philadelphia, so it really is Tavares’s team.

In Anaheim, with high expectations as the No. 3–overall team, the Ducks banked on their captain’s experience. The fleeing hairline isn’t the only sign that Anaheim’s 28-year-old captain is reaching a new level of maturity on and off the ice. After the worst season of his career in 2011–12, Ryan Getzlaf returned to form—and was handsomely rewarded with an eight-year, $66-million deal. Teammates noticed that after their captain’s journey into mediocrity—which coincided with his first journey into fatherhood—the physical, six-foot-four, 221-lb. power forward returned as a much more even-tempered leader. “Last year was a little bit of a learning curve for me in many ways, on and off the ice,” Getzlaf admitted after a team practice during the first round. This season, he was less emotional than in the past, giving him a better handle on managing the team’s expectations, which only grew as the regular season went on. “It took him a while to get out of it,” coach Bruce Boudreau said of his captain’s slump. “This year, he’s been consistent from day one. The leader of this club and the best player. The straw that stirs the drink on our team.”

He remained that through Anaheim’s seven-game loss to a surprising Detroit team, leading his squad in scoring. And at times through the series, a thrilled, goofy grin returned to Getzlaf’s face. He erased questions about his production, but it wasn’t enough. And people began taking notice that since winning the Cup in 2007, the Ducks have won just a single series.

Disappointment is a familiar refrain in Washington, where Alex Ovechkin began the series against the New York Rangers wearing a bright red T-shirt that read: “I Will Step On You To Win.” He sat drenched in sweat, wearing a tight undershirt. His wet hair was a spiked, wild mess. A shaped goatee framed his frown. His third-seeded Capitals had just lost 5–0 in game seven, blowing 2–0 and 3–2 series leads. Only a month earlier, everything seemed to indicate that Ovie was back—from his production on the ice to his swagger in the dressing room. The Capitals captain went on an incredible tear to finish the shortened season, scoring 23 goals in the final 23 games, earning the Hart Trophy for his efforts. In the playoffs, he played hard and physical. He spoke to the press every day and went on a shopping spree in Manhattan between games three and four. He played on a fractured foot, after blocking two slap shots in a row in game six. He hid the pain, beyond a hesitant stumble on the ice. He became a wrecking ball in game seven, with 13 crushing hits. But Ovie’s offence abandoned him. Sitting in the Capitals’ dressing room, dishevelled and distressed, Ovechkin tried to find a reason for the playoff drought. In English, he applauded Rangers goalie Henrik Lundqvist. In Russian, he declared a league-wide plot, with the difference in power plays (5–0 in New York’s favour in game six) as exhibit No. 1. “I’m not saying there was a phone call from [the league] … but someone just wanted game seven. For the ratings. You know, the lockout, the escrow, the league needs to make profit.” The captain led physically, but fell apart where his team needed him most. The season’s leading goal scorer managed a single goal in the playoffs. He finished with two points and a conspiracy theory.

If the Capitals-Rangers series was a John Grisham novel, the Battle of Highway 417 was something out of Stephen King’s mind. From the get-go it was a brutal, vicious thing—a war of houses too close for pleasantries. The image of Montreal’s Lars Eller laid out, dark red pooling near his head courtesy of an open-ice hit, set a violent tone for the series. Senators coach Paul MacLean was called a “bug-eyed, fat Walrus.” And at least one Habs fans was seen wearing a “Gryba will die” T-shirt. But Brian Gionta could only watch. As his left arm twisted and bent backwards on a “fluke play in the neutral zone” during that bloody first game, he recognized the pop immediately. He’d heard it first a year earlier, when he tore his right bicep—it meant surgery and 51 games missed.

Hoping for a miracle of torn tissue, Gionta sat out game two and tried to return for game three. He played 18 minutes through the pain before his arm simply didn’t work anymore. He couldn’t stickhandle, couldn’t shoot, couldn’t win physical battles. Told his season was over, Gionta wept in coach Michel Therrien’s arms.

But in public, the five-foot-seven Gionta didn’t betray a whimper. “There was a loss of function,” he explained, standing in the Canadiens’ dressing room, wearing a light blue Reebok zip-up sweater. His face remained unshaven, clinging to his playoff shadow. He answered the questions without the emotion Therrien described, only an appropriate frown. His team was spending more time in the infirmary than on the ice. The Senators were beating the Habs into submission. “Those guys are battling hard, and when you’re not able to be out there with them, going through it, trying to help in any way you can—it’s extremely hard.”

No one will ever mistake Gionta for Jean Béliveau or even Saku Koivu, but without their captain in the lineup, the Habs fell quickly. The Sens finished them off with an embarrassing 6–1 assault at the Bell Centre, the boos pouring down after the first three goals against. Ottawa scored three power-play goals in the final period, the rink silent throughout.

While Gionta couldn’t do more, it seemed in Minnesota, Mikko Koivu just couldn’t do enough. “Where is Koivu when we need him?” the Minnesota Star Tribune blasted. The calls for teammate Zach Parise to take over the captaincy only got louder. The 30-year-old Finn was in his eighth season with the Wild and had become their first permanent captain in 2009. But in the team’s first playoff appearance in five years, Koivu disappeared. In truth, this had stopped being Koivu’s team the minute hometown boy Parise was signed in July. He had emerged as the Wild’s emotional leader and the scrums were always largest around him, a scenario the blond, blue-eyed Koivu seemed at ease with. When it was his turn, he stood in front of his stall, next to the rink outlined on the dressing-room carpet, batting back questions about his team’s play in his clipped way. Koivu was quick to point out that his line had managed to render the Blackhawks’ top three relatively scoreless. Not good enough. In a series that began with a surge of expectation, the Blackhawks won in five games. Koivu was minus-6, with no points, seven shots and four penalties. He’s left to face the reality that he’s becoming a captain in name only.

While the silence was deafening in Minnesota, the fans were the loudest David Backes had ever heard at the Scottrade Center. Trailing by a goal in the final minute of game five against the defending Stanley Cup champions, the Blues captain won a draw that led to the game-tying goal. Somewhere in the mob, Backes was trying to settle the team’s emotions. “You’ve got to take the good and bury it,” he’d told his teammates in deep, throaty tones after the Blues took a two-game lead to start the series. “And you’ve got to take the bad and bury it.” Ever since the Blues had their team psychologist evaluate Backes as a candidate for the captaincy back in 2011, the six-foot-three, 220-lb. Minnesota native—with his strong all-American chin—had been the model of measured leadership. Never too high. Never too low.

But as the 20th captain in Blues history, he had yet to lead them to glory, stopped in their tracks in back-to-back years by the L.A. Kings. At least this year they had taken it to the reigning champs. And after losing games three and four in L.A., St. Louis seemed to have halted the Kings’ surge by tying game five up with moments to go. The fans could feel it. The players could feel it. Finally, this constantly contending Blues team would avoid its annual disappointment. But, eight minutes and 45 seconds later, it was silent. Backes tried to rally his team after the deflating overtime loss. “We’ve played these guys as tight as anyone has in the last five rounds of playoffs.”

In the end, the rout was unstoppable. The Kings won in six, another tough loss for a young, maturing team and its captain.

While Blues fans will likely forgive their team’s first-round letdown, Canucks fans certainly won’t. The vein above Henrik Sedin’s right eye was throbbing. Camera lights glowed on his wet forehead. He wore a soaked black shirt that clung to his torso. The mild-mannered Sedin stood to face judgment with his back to a white concrete-block wall at HP Pavillion in San Jose, searching for answers to fill the empty echoes of Vancouver’s hollow play. Penalties killed them, he said. And the last one—the overtime boarding call against his brother that led to the game-winner—well, he shouldn’t comment, but: “It’s a bullshit call. And it’s wartime.”

But if it was wartime, as leader, Sedin once again failed to perform when the Canucks needed him most. His team was outscored 15–8 in being swept by San Jose. He and his brother had no goals, having managed just three assists each. It was the second straight year in which the brothers, and by logical extension, the Canucks, had failed to be relevant in the post-season.

His mouth made a hard line, accentuated by the reddish brown beard on his angular chin. “Look at our lineup. This is not the way we should go out,” he said before clearing his throat, sighing and frowning. “It was almost like a first-time playoff team playing against a team that’s been there before. And that can’t happen.” This team, by his admission, was the best they’d put together, which only made the blow even worse. The sacrifice would come later with the firing of coach Alain Vigneault. But much of the remaining ire would fall on Sedin. The window was closing for this team, that much had become painfully obvious.

The Ottawa Senators’ 40-year-old professor dashed around the ice at Scotiabank Place hours before the start of game three against the Pittsburgh Penguins. The future of the franchise tried to chip the puck free from Daniel Alfredsson. The class consisted of Marc Methot, Zack Smith, Cory Conacher, Jean-Gabriel Pageau and Kyle Turris. The oldest was 27-year-old Methot, the youngest, Pageau, just 20. Alfredsson dangled through the kids, his strawberry-blond hair billowing from his helmet. Age has had little effect on him—his muscular core and upper body are still limber and agile after 20 years of pro hockey.

In the Senators’ dressing room, he owns a space at the back wall, opposite the entrance, between Pageau and Milan Michalek. The room is wallpapered in posters recalling the Senators’ greatest moments. Alfredsson’s legacy is everywhere. There are 20 plaques on the wall, listing the rosters for each of the franchise’s 20 seasons. He appears in all but three. Above his stall, on the right, hang lists of franchise leaders. His name tops games played, goals, assists and points. There is no hyperbole in saying that the history of the Ottawa Senators and that of Daniel Alfredsson are one and the same. Here, literally beneath his legacy, he sat before game three—trailing 2–0 in the series—staring ahead across the red Sens room, quietly focusing, visualizing another moment of glory to add to those walls. There were no earbuds pumping adrenalin-laced bass through his veins. There’s no anthem for “Alfie”—he doesn’t even own an iPod.

On the ice that night in front of 20,500 mad fans, the Senators captain added to his legend. With his team short-handed and trailing 1–0 in the final minute, Alfredsson started a breakout, dropped the puck at his own blueline and beelined for the Pens’ crease in a final, desperate attack. Sneaking behind the Pittsburgh defence, he tipped in a cross-ice pass from the right point by Michalek, then jumped in unison with the thunder at Scotiabank Place. “Ottawa needed a hero, and as usual it’s their captain,” CBC’s Jim Hughson proclaimed on Hockey Night in Canada. Colin Greening scored in double overtime to give the Sens the win. It was the second time in the playoffs Alfredsson had kept his team alive in the dying moments of a game. “That’s what captains do,” Paul MacLean said afterwards. “They have the uncanny ability to step up at the right time and say or do the right thing.”

To the press, Alfie has always been thoughtful and philosophical. He takes time to answer questions, looking reporters in the eye when he speaks. Lately, he’d spoken a lot about missing his kids. During an off day in the playoffs, he spent every minute with them, not giving a passing thought to hockey. He’d been away for his son William’s second birthday, and that bothered him. “Part of the job; but still you want to be there,” he said.

The Senators were dismantled 7–3 by the Penguins two nights later. Alfredsson scored a late goal, meaningless except that it was his 100th playoff point. He kept the puck. Still drenched in sweat and exasperated, he was once again honest with the press. “There was no specific reason,” he told them about collecting the puck. “Could this be my last season? I don’t know.” He was asked if it was likely that the Senators could come back from 3–1 down against a team like the Penguins. “Probably not,” he replied. The next day, Alfredsson recanted and said he was misquoted. He wasn’t. The words outlined a looming reality. It was unlikely that the Senators’ greatest player would ever raise the Cup. Pittsburgh won in five. And in the Ottawa captain’s constant game of keep-away, the future may have finally caught up.

In the Big Apple, the future was supposed to be now. The off-season acquisition of Rick Nash and the late-season jettisoning of Marian Gaborik had changed the team for the good, the public was told. An emotional victory in the Washington series had battle-tested the Rangers, and a matchup against the vulnerable-looking Boston Bruins augured well for advancement. But it wasn’t to be.

Ryan Callahan had been staying in the shadows. The 28-year-old from Rochester, N.Y., had made himself scarce throughout the playoffs, oddly out of character for a guy generally quite affable and patient with the aggressive press in New York. Win or lose, Callahan took his role as the team’s voice seriously—and this season there were a lot of questions. But 12 days after dispatching the Capitals, there was nowhere for him to hide. No way to avoid the New York media and the looming questions about a team that simply underachieved.

On the ice, Callahan had done his best to lead, scoring 16 points in the final 14 regular-season games as New York made a frantic push to scale the East’s rungs, eventually finishing sixth. Throughout the season, the captain diligently provided his quotes in a level tone, often while shaking a plastic bottle filled with a milky-green recovery drink. And yet through the first round and into the second, Callahan left most of the dressing-room scrums to Henrik Lundqvist, Brian Boyle and Ryan McDonagh.

But on elimination night, Callahan sat in his stall and dutifully faced the pack after the Bruins clinched the series in five too-easy games. There was a large red scrape on his right cheek. His brown hair was wet and pushed back. His playoff beard had hardly grown. As the reporters circled, he stayed seated, leaning forward with his shoulders hunched. It was revealed later that he’d been playing with a labrum that required surgery after being torn in January—though at this point he let on only to the most obvious bumps and bruises.

As usual, the New York captain had put his body on the line—no Ranger threw more hits, no forward blocked more shots—and chirped endlessly, trying to set a tone for his team. Still, (soon-to-be-dismissed) coach John Tortorella had called him out, saying he needed to see something more from his right-winger. The effort was there, but it didn’t show on the scoresheet—Callahan managed just a goal and an assist against the Bruins. “It sucks,” the captain said, setting the tone for an off-season of introspection.

While a dark cloud hung over Callahan, it seemed like Joe Thornton’s world was nothing but sunshine and good times. With San Jose trailing the L.A. Kings 2–0, “Jumbo” just wanted to talk about the love—the stress-free California vibe that permeated the Sharks’ dressing room, where the big captain kept his team loose and relaxed. “We’re just having a lot of fun,” he said on a sunny day after practice. “You just don’t want this thing to end.”

Fifteen seasons into his career, the six-foot-four, 225-lb. muscle-packed centre isn’t the type to let the game get him down. Teammates describe him as “a big kid” who’s “loud and goofy” and insist he’s “never had a bad day in his life.” His coach praises his “free-spiritedness.” It all sounds great, but doesn’t really fit the accepted mould of a successful playoff leader.

Since he was about 20, Thornton has consistently been one of the most dominant players in the game. And just as consistently, he’s been criticized for failing to lead his teams to the Cup. Since joining the Sharks in 2005, the team has never missed the playoffs and has reached the Western final twice. Good but not great. In his “old age” he’s gone from a finesse player known best for his sublime playmaking, to a grittier guy. Now, at 33, Thornton knows that each season becomes a critical chapter in the story of his career.

On the bench, he chats and jokes constantly with his younger linemates, T.J. Galiardi and converted D-man Brent Burns. Several times through the series, the recently formed trio got tangled up and lost on the ice. Thornton brushed the incidents aside with a quip as the three just leaned back and chuckled. “The main thing is that we have so much fun together,” he said. “It’s a match made in heaven.”

As much as the laid-back, stress-free approach failed San Jose on the road, it seemed to work in the cozy confines of the HP Pavilion. The Sharks managed to tie the series 2–2, and before game five, Thornton stuck with his chilled-out routine. He smiled through the morning skate and took some time to joke around with the team’s equipment guys on the bench, something he did throughout the series. As for the pressure that comes with playing in the second season, it’s better than the alternative. “You enjoy it,” he said, shrugging. “Guys who are at home or on vacation, feeling no pressure, they’re not feeling so good.”

The series stretched to a tight-checking seventh game, which the Sharks lost 2–1. After torching the Canucks for six points in a round-one sweep, Thornton slowed to four versus L.A. Less than 15 hours after the loss, he was at the team’s practice facility in suburban San Jose, saying he was going to miss his aches and pains—reminders that he’s still playing hockey. And along with the pain, he’d miss all the love. “We were just having so much fun,” he said.

For Henrik Zetterberg, a rookie captain at 32, playing in a hockey hotbed, leading a team that had captured four of the past 15 Cups and hadn’t missed the playoffs in 22 years, it’s fair to say there was a little more pressure to win.

Zetterberg learned his trade from two of the best leaders hockey has ever known. As a youngster, he occupied the dressing-room stall next to Steve Yzerman, soaking up what it meant to be a complete hockey player. As he got older, management pegged him to follow in Nicklas Lidstrom’s footsteps to become the franchise’s third captain in the past 27 years. He’s strong enough to be a physical force and agile enough to make dazzling plays, and yet Zetterberg is no machine forged in a Detroit factory. He leads his own way, showing more humour and personality than Yzerman or Lidstrom ever did.

His tradition of wearing red knee-high socks around the dressing room coupled with a bushy castaway playoff beard—long enough to have noticeable knots—made him look like a giant, grizzled elf from the North Pole.

The best gift he delivered the Detroit faithful this spring was a seven-game upset of Anaheim; the Wings captain had seven points in the final three contests. And then his team put a foot on Chicago’s throat, frustrating the Blackhawks to the point of distraction and taking a commanding 3–1 series lead before faltering. Zetterberg tied the seventh game early in the third period—it was his 55th playoff goal, pushing him past Lidstrom for second all-time among Swedes—but the series ended three and a half minutes into overtime.

Facing his first series defeat as captain, Zetterberg led the procession of Wings in the traditional end-of-series handshake at centre ice. He had more to say than just the expected “good job” to many if not all the Blackhawks—one last chance to set an example. Later, he hung around longer than usual in the visitors’ dressing room, speaking for his team. “It feels really empty right now. We have to win four,” he said while rubbing his forehead sadly. “We won three. Season over.”

But not for all. The conference finals were hailed as the best in years—featuring the past four men to lift the Stanley Cup in celebration.

“What we need right now is leadership.” The words echoed through an empty corridor of closed concession stands and memorabilia shops at the Consol Energy Center in Pittsburgh. It was close to midnight after game two of the Eastern Conference final, which the Penguins had just lost 6–1 to the Bruins. Many fans had started leaving with more than 10 minutes remaining in the third period. Others had stayed around to let the bitter debacle fully resonate. They were all gone now. The post-game radio show was left on as the arena’s custodial staff swept up. At the far end of the dimly lit hall, a portrait of the greatest hockey player in the game today stretched from ceiling to floor. The voice booming from the speakers was incredulous in its demands: “Is it Iggy? Is it Morrow? Is it Crosby?

Outside of the context of the East final, the question would seem ridiculous. At 25, Sidney Crosby is already a Cup winner and an Olympic hero. He’s won the Hart, Art Ross and “Rocket” Richard Trophies. This season, he added his second Ted Lindsay Award—the NHL’s best player as chosen by his peers.

Along with the accolades, he built a resilient comeback narrative after concussion-plagued seasons threatened his career, and he missed the final month of this season courtesy of a slapshot that broke his jaw and shattered 10 teeth, pushing several of them into the supporting bone. He lost 10 lb. recovering. But he returned, his face—the face of a franchise, league and sport—almost completely encased in protective plastic, playing his aggressive, fearless, two-way brand of hockey and averaging 1.5 points per game.

Then the Bruins showed up.

The lower teeth on the right side of Crosby’s mouth are still broken, a jagged row of descending peaks that look like a white-capped mountain range. He talks with a lisp as he holds court at his stall in the centre of the Penguins’ oval dressing room. Crosby is a master of quotes that are thoughtful enough to sound genuine but safe enough to avoid controversy—it’s a skill he’s been honing since he was a preteen. The media address him in shifts, until his PR guards decide he’s through.

Beyond the hordes holding microphones, there’s no question Crosby is the leader of this Penguins team. There’s never been any doubt, really. During the lockout, when teams weren’t allowed contact with players, Crosby organized skates at the Penguins’ practice facility. He drew up drills, put the nets in place and picked up the pucks afterward. When the odd skate was cancelled, it was Crosby who emailed beat reporters to make sure they didn’t waste their time showing up. Then, during the shortened season, he missed only a single day of speaking to the press, other than those weeks when his face was shattered. Throughout the playoffs, you’d find him leaning back in his stall long after most of the regulars had showered and left, chatting and laughing with rookies and journeymen alike.

After one morning skate during the Ottawa series, a reporter asked rookie Beau Bennett, a healthy scratch at the time, what it was like to be on the team but really not part of it. Bennett’s captain interjected sternly: “He is part of the team.”

During the conference final, Crosby hung around the room in flip-flops, black long johns hugging his famously thick thighs and wearing a grey long-sleeved undershirt. Jarome Iginla had been ushered out for the media. So was Brenden Morrow. Evgeni Malkin was in the room for two minutes, tops. All three in and out. Not Crosby. After a 10-minute scrum, he just leaned back in his stall. The Penguins handlers watched him closely, making sure rogue reporters didn’t slip in with any questions. He jokingly asked an equipment guy if he could pack his own socks. Then he sat back down and laughed with Pascal Dupuis about the first time his parents took him to the Keg. “I was like, ‘It doesn’t come with anything?!’” he said. “It’s just a steak?”

Crosby isn’t one for speeches. His play on the ice is usually enough to inspire. But his leadership goes deeper than chastising reporters and jocular dressing-room banter; he speaks up when he’s needed. After a lacklustre first period that left the Penguins trailing Ottawa 2–1 in game four of their second-round series, Crosby told his teammates, in no uncertain terms, that he’d seen enough, that he expected more from them. Pittsburgh scored 12 goals in the next five periods to end Ottawa’s season.

Even when things started to spiral out of control versus the Bruins, Crosby remained outwardly positive. Despite losing a second game to Boston at home and going down 2–0 in the series, Crosby had done his best to keep his teammates relaxed and confident. It was a routine: laugh in practice, joke with teammates and then focus on the game. He has his superstitions: a peanut butter and jelly sandwich at 5 p.m. on game days, wearing the same ratty, faded Penguins cap during media scrums. He also meticulously tapes his sticks—black across the blade, with a white knob and spiralling grip—and puts them in the same spot every game. If someone touches them, they’re re-taped. On the road, they’re kept next to him in his stall so he knows where they are, and he constantly adjusts them so reporters can’t trample them. But if Crosby is a creature of habit, so is his team. The Penguins have the tendency to play exactly like their captain. And Crosby fell apart against Boston, as both a player and a leader.

In the first game, he and counterpart Zdeno Chara got into a heated skirmish at the end of the second period. Chara leaned way down to look Crosby in the eye as they shouted at each other. The Penguins captain shoved first. (Crosby’s agent would later allege that Chara had deliberately punched him in the jaw.) It seemed like a galvanizing moment for Pittsburgh, but the Bruins won 3–0. In game two, Crosby and his teammates spent much of the time freelancing on the ice. It didn’t work. The Bruins dismantled the Penguins. Crosby was shut out again in game three, unhinging his usually flawless game. A team that was 10 minutes away from losing in round one to the Maple Leafs was suddenly a game away from sweeping the league’s highest-scoring group. David Krejci, the leading scorer in the playoffs, was asked if he considers the Bruins’ top scorers to be at the same level as Crosby and Malkin. “No. Those guys, I think they’re the best players in the world at this moment. There’s no one like those guys,” Krecji replied. “On the other hand, we have a team.”

That team shut out the Penguins in game four to advance to the Stanley Cup final for the second time in three seasons. After scoring 15 points in 10 playoff games, Crosby went scoreless.

When it was over, he sat against a grey wall in a funeral-black undershirt, that same Penguins cap pulled over his wet curls. As he answered the inevitable questions about what went wrong, his head shook sadly while he explained it as a simple lack of finish. Two thoughts resonated: “There’s a number of things we’ll look back on and know we could have been better,” and, “It doesn’t sit very well.” He answered the media’s queries, but when it was over, the question “Is it Crosby?” still lingered back in Pittsburgh.

Think of a captain diametrically opposed to Crosby in terms of star power and you’ll look, ironically, to Hollywood and Dustin Brown, a player many fans would have a hard time naming, let alone recognizing, and the only one remaining in the conference finals who wasn’t a bona fide star. A non-commissioned officer rather than a West Point grad, you could say.

Brown has close-cropped hair, straight eyebrows and a flat smile. He’s a man who gets along with everyone but is a lot more likely to be seen hauling his kids around than palling around with teammates. Bizarrely, his playoff beard grows well on some parts of his face, but not at all on others. He’s from Ithaca, N.Y., which isn’t even Albany. When the Kings won the Cup last year, he cursed beautifully on live television. “That’s why we f–king play!” Later he tweeted: “@NBC sorry about the f-bomb. Hey what can I say it was a pretty emotional time. #nbc=familyprogramming.” He acted exactly the way some beer-league schmo would if he won the Cup—pure, unedited emotion.

Brown led the playoffs in scoring a year ago, but isn’t on the ice to put up points. He managed all of four (three goals and an assist) through 13 hard-fought games—12 decided by a single goal—in the first two rounds. He’s a banger—eighth in the NHL in hits, his lowest finish in the past seven years. He often leaves opponents in a tangled pile after he’s knocked them over, and he plays through pain—he had a torn knee ligament the entire Chicago series. He leads a team that loves to hit and plays an often-lamented lockdown defence. “We could bore you all to death,” Brown says in response to the critics. “I couldn’t care less. We found something that’s successful for us.”

As captain of a team filled with vocal players who take on leadership roles, Brown’s really just one among several stabilizing forces in the dressing room. Kings coach Darryl Sutter says his team has about six captains, with three or four older guys who keep him posted on what’s going on. With the “C” on his chest, Brown embodies a mature, physical, intense, resilient bunch. One that’s been to the top of the mountain and understands the climb. “You can draw on being in the trench hole together,” he said before game five. “The most important thing is leaning on each other.”

The Kings lost that fifth game and the series, scoring two fewer goals than the Blackhawks overall. Brown played his usual physical game but went pointless. The series ended with Patrick Kane sliding on his knees, hands pumping in victory in front of 22,237 roaring fans shaking Chicago’s madhouse. His one-timer from Toews in double overtime gave the Blackhawks a 4–3 win. The Kings weren’t supposed to win the series, but the loss stung a little more than it would have in years past. “Once you win a Stanley Cup, it means a lot more getting knocked out,” Brown said. “You don’t really know what you play for until you do it. And tonight… it sucks.”

A yellow singlet with a Bruins logo hung on a hook next to Zdeno Chara’s stall in Boston’s dressing room. It belonged to Lucas Carr, an Army Ranger who served in Iraq. Carr, who gave the team a combat jacket that was awarded after every playoff game to the best Bruin, crossed the finish line at the Boston Marathon when the bombs went off and rushed into the chaos to help save victims who had been maimed.

Throughout the playoffs, Chara and the rest of the Bruins downplayed the importance of their run to the Cup in light of the tragedy. But along the city’s streets—where flags and shirts and banners linked the spirit of Boston to the team’s play—there was no doubt this was about more than a game. “Their resiliency is telling the world that you can kick us but we’re not going down,” Carr said. “We’re in this together.”

That’s what defined the Bruins in the first round of the playoffs. Boston overcame almost certain defeat during their journey to the final, becoming the first team ever to win a game seven when trailing by three goals in the third period. Since that historic comeback, the Bruins had lost once—in overtime to the Rangers—heading into the final.

If Chara was satisfied with his team’s accomplishments so far, it was impossible to glean from the deliberately brief answers he gave the media. It’s nothing personal, he told one beat reporter—it’s just the playoffs. And so answers like “I’m not here to talk about myself,” “Ask me about the game,” and “I’m not talking about the game plan” became staples in the limited lexicon of a defenceman who is fluent in five languages and studied financial management at Algonquin College back when he was playing in Ottawa. Any hint of a smile from “Z” was guarded like a state secret. It seems the last time he truly, exuberantly beamed was when hoisting the Cup over his head in 2011—a moment immortalized in a wall-sized photo plastered next to the escalator that leads to the suites at the Garden.

Much like that year, Chara, who was averaging more ice time than anyone else during the playoffs, set the aggressive physical tone for Boston. Even for a six-foot-nine, 255-lb. man, his endurance shouldn’t come as a surprise. Chara’s a fitness freak. He sticks to a strict workout and is an avid cyclist. (Though teammate Andrew Ference, also a cyclist, is certain he can “kick his ass.”)

Growing up, Chara’s ever-rising frame was more of a curse than a blessing. He didn’t start playing hockey until he was 10. His first time on the ice, he fell and chipped his tooth. He then held the boards as he staggered around the rink. As a teenager, Chara, the son of an amateur wrestler, spent hours doing off-ice training on a wooded hill behind his house. (He keeps the regimen secret and still does it through the off-season.) Ference first witnessed Chara’s tough side playing junior against him in the Western Hockey League, where the big kid tossed aside the first few goons who challenged him. “He didn’t need to work on that part of his game,” says Ference. “But skating-wise, he wasn’t half of the player he is now.” Chara worked tirelessly, transforming himself into an agile and quick skater.

He also commands a kind of respect automatically granted to any man who can squash you like a bug. But in the Bruins dressing room—a boisterous, easygoing place—he takes on a patriarchal role. He’s not as laid-back or comic as Johnny Boychuk, Brad Marchand or Milan Lucic; nor as vocal as assistant captain Patrice Bergeron. Chara doesn’t drink. And he demands that his teammates strive for the same level of excellence that he does. It doesn’t mean he’s not social with or popular among his mates. But you’re more likely to find him scouring through mystery novels, reading up on the latest cycling scandal, or racing his bike with Ference.

If you’re around the Bruins long enough, you’ll also find that Chara has a soft side. In 2008, he travelled to Africa with the charity Right to Play. Somewhere, video exists of Chara playing duck, duck, goose with little girls in Mozambique. (That trip also included the climbing of Mount Kilimanjaro, the tallest free-standing mountain in the world.)

As any NHL opponent can attest, however, Chara is a far different man on the ice. In fact, if there’s one thing that’s changed in Chara since becoming the Bruins captain in 2006, it’s the rise of his gritty ferociousness. The 36-year-old has become accustomed to zeroing in on opposing stars. “He’s dictating instead of reacting,” says Stan Butler, who coached him in major junior. In the East final, he swatted Crosby’s surgically repaired jaw and later, during another scuffle, it looked like Chara might take the Kid’s head off.

The game plan didn’t change against the Blackhawks. And Chara, the load-bearing beam at the centre of the franchise, was leaned on to play 44 minutes of a triple overtime game. But he could do nothing from the bench, as the puck bounced off the leg of Chicago’s Andrew Shaw, past Rask in the 112th minute of play, ending the fifth-longest game in final history. “I love you, Bolly!” Shaw shouted—swarmed by exhausted Hawks—to teammate Dave Bolland, who’d taken the original shot. “I love shin pads!”

In the visitors’ room, the Bruins were fired up and pissed off. Not dejected. Kaspars Daugavins, who fanned on an open net, sat at his stall with his head buried in his hands. Players dissected the game in the showers—“Every time you get it, put the puck on net. I’m just cheating for it in case there’s a rebound,” said one. “You’ve got to call for it though, you know?” said another. The players ate pizza and drank Gatorade and coconut water and stormed off to the bus in tailored suits. There was no sign of Chara, who is usually off in the trainer’s room post-game, riding a stationary bike or having a masseuse work on the tissue in his massive thighs.

He was much easier to find after his team won game two, a 2–1 overtime victory. In the spartan visitors’ dressing room, Chara stood in front of his wooden stall in a black Bruins hoodie, matching shorts and flip-flops. He spoke to reporters in English and then in Slovak (a handful of journalists from his home country followed him during the playoffs). His answers were quick and short, and when the masses left, he sat down and took a long gulp from a Gatorade bottle. He poured in some protein powder, took another swig, put on a pair of running shoes, grabbed a Pro Bar and wove through a mass of media before disappearing into the trainer’s room.

Chara’s ferocious play continued in game three back at TD Garden. He tossed aside Hawks all game, starting with an aggressive forecheck by Jonathan Toews on the first shift. Later, frothing with rage, he rushed Toews for accidentally bumping into Tuukka Rask. When a ref grabbed his sweater, Chara looked ready to swat the grip away like a fly. But no one felt his wrath more than Chicago’s Bryan Bickell, who was tasked with trying to knock Chara off his game. Bickell found himself pinned to the ice with 11 seconds remaining. The Bruins have had a lot of success playing this style of hockey. And on this night—a 2–0 Bruins win—it helped keep Toews off the scoresheet.

Afterwards, Chara stood barefoot in the Bruins dressing room. His head extended high above the cameramen and reporters that crowded around, at least five people deep. He refused to answer questions about the fight with Bickell. Ditto the stitches he got colliding with Lucic in the pregame warm-up. Asked about his effectiveness containing Toews and Kane, he replied: “They are good players.” He stared out over the crowd before him, his mouth making a flat line, his eyes unblinking, his voice even and dull. When the flock shuffled to Rask, Chara grabbed his laundry bag and navigated through a maze of scurrying cameramen and reporters. It took him at least 30 seconds to get across the room. Later, he returned in a beige towel—a giant mass of pale white muscles. Reporters shuffled out of his way.

Something was wrong in Jonathan Toews’s head. Veteran defenceman Brent Seabrook could see it. Toews came unglued in game four against Detroit in the second round, picking up three penalties in just 10 minutes, ostensibly costing his team the game when the Red Wings scored to take a 1–0 lead during his second penalty. Toews stewed in the box on his third trip there. Seabrook could see the frustration getting to his 25-year-old captain. He opened the penalty-box door, shook Toews’s helmet and told him to get his head in the game. Toews rebounded in the series, guiding the Hawks back from a three-games-to-one hole to force a seventh game. His dressing room speeches reminded his teammates to find one simple thing: “Just pure confidence,” he said. The Blackhawks came from behind in the final game to win in overtime.

And it was just pure confidence that Seabrook reminded his captain to find as he struggled through the first three games of the Cup final. Toews had a single goal in the playoffs and the frustration was clearly affecting him. Tired of hearing everyone talk about the little things Toews was doing right, Seabrook sat down with Toews at the team’s hotel in Boston and told him, once again, to get it together. Once again, the pep talk worked.

Since becoming the third-youngest captain in NHL history as a 20-year-old sophomore in 2008, Toews has seemed to carry the presence of someone much older than his years. His first coach, Denis Savard, is still searching for a man like Toews to marry his daughter. He’s impressed not only by Toews’s humility and drive, but also his professional awareness. The first time they met, Toews greeted Savard in French. There was no one around; Toews just felt it was the polite thing do. He was raised bilingual in Winnipeg. Savard knew the kid would be his captain and gave him the “C” a year later.

Toews is an obvious foil to Chicago’s other superstar, Patrick Kane—he of the mullet with racing stripes. While Kane made headlines for his off-ice antics, Toews was nicknamed “Captain Serious” for his seemingly stoic personality. He certainly comes across as the vanilla stripe in a Neapolitan team, with colourful personalities like Kane, Andrew Shaw, Dan Carcillo and Dave Bolland in the dressing room. But teammates insist Toews is a fun teammate—but always focused, always driven to be the best, while putting the team first. His humility was displayed when he was awarded this year’s Selke Trophy as the league’s best defensive forward. “There’s no chance I’d be up for an award if I wasn’t in the middle of a great team,” he says. And there was no chance he’d be there, in the Cup final, if that team wasn’t scoring for him, too.

So he lined up his one-timers during practice before game four—missing four in a row, before shovelling a fifth into the net and slamming his stick in fury. The Blackhawks PR tried to shield him from the media the day before, refusing to let him be interviewed. He slipped out of the dressing room after the reporters had left.

But sometime before game four, Seabrook’s message sunk in. Toews went right at Chara, colliding with his counterpart on the first shift and getting into a shoving match with him five minutes in. The Blackhawks opened up the ice and exposed the Bruins’ defence. They sent two guys at Chara throughout the game, hitting him from all angles, hacking at his stick. In the second period, Bickell took out Chara’s feet in the Boston crease, sending him sprawling on the ice. A moment later, Toews tipped in his first goal in 10 games. He thrust his knee in the air while fist-pumping and let out a massive roar of released frustration. Chara lumbered to his skates looking stunned.

The up and down game saw Chicago jump ahead by two goals twice, with goals seeming to find the net every couple minutes. The resilient Bruins kept fighting and tied the game with eight minutes to go, forcing yet another overtime. Seabrook scored the winner in the first sudden-death frame, on a shot screened by Toews, whom a listless Chara was unable to move. The Bruins captain was on the ice for five of Chicago’s six goals. He had two assists, but was minus-3. Toews finished with a goal and an assist. By the time the media got to the visitors’ dressing room, the Blackhawks equipment was already packed away and the name tags pulled off the stalls. Balls of white and black tape were scattered around the room, along with white towels, bottles of half-finished Gatorade, power bars and browning bananas. A trainer emptied the team fridge of Red Bull and flavoured coconut water. On the other side of the building, past the yellow buses where a handful of the Bruins checked their cellphones and killed time, Toews took the podium between Kane and Seabrook. Toews shared the relief of finally scoring, of being rid of that terrible burden. And of the giant that guards the opponent’s net—Toews thought they’d finally found his weakness. “There are certain ways you can expose him,” Toews said. “We try to not to be intimidated by his size … we can outwork him and we did that tonight.”

The relentless attack on Chara continued in game five back at Chicago’s rollicking madhouse. He was on the ice for two goals by Kane, both assisted by Toews. In the second period, Toews took a hard blind-side hit from Johnny Boychuk as he deked through the Bruins zone and cut into the high slot trying to fire a shot on Rask. Toews crumpled to the ice, but jumped up quickly, yelled at the ref and skated to his bench. Chara unleashed a rocket to get the Bruins on the board. Toews begged Joel Quenneville to let him play: “Give me one shift,” he said. But No. 19 stayed glued to the bench through the third period as the Blackhawks won 3–1. One win away from the Cup, the captain who couldn’t score became the captain who might not be able to play.

But Toews never had a doubt. He’d told the trainers and his coach that he was fine. Nothing would keep him from the chance to raise that Cup again. He posed for photos with fans outside TD Garden in Boston. And most importantly, the team he led knew he’d be there when they needed him. Toews walked out from the Blackhawks dressing room in shorts and a ratty old Blackhawks T-shirt to address three dozen reporters waiting for him. “I feel great,” he said. Chicago wasn’t going to risk exposing their vulnerable captain to the wrath of Chara. But one win away from the Cup, not even that could stop him.

The final battle was a clash of chosen men. Five minutes in, Chara dumped Toews awkwardly on his side. The Bruins took the lead later in the first. But Toews got his revenge in the second, stripping Chara of the puck at the blueline, streaking down the ice with a mountain-climbing, bike-racing giant staggering to catch him. Toews crossed into the Boston zone, took three strides to the same spot he had stood days before—missing shot after shot on an empty net. He snapped his wrists and fired a bullet between the pads of Rask. He turned to his bench, glaring like he had that day—but this wasn’t frustration. This was triumph. He was already sketching his name on the Cup, even though it’d take a stunning last-minute collapse by the Bruins to secure it. Two goals in 17 seconds—Bickell from Toews for the tie, Bolland for the win—and Chicago had done it.

Jonathan Toews, the last chosen one standing, clutched the silver mug, thrust it high in the air and then pulled it to his lips. The second Cup of his young career. And the only goal that mattered.