On being a Penguins fan in D.C. during a Capitals Stanley Cup run

The team itself is pretty inoffensive, but Capitals fans are making being a Penguins fan in the District feel like a crime.

It didn’t hurt nearly as much as I thought it would when the Washington Capitals put my Pittsburgh Penguins away in six games to advance to the Eastern Conference Final. Two Stanley Cups in a row cushioned that particular blow to the point where I was almost happy for the long-struggling Caps.

Flash forward about a month, one Eastern Conference Finals defeat of the Tampa Bay Lightning and two Stanley Cup victories over the Las Vegas Golden Knights later, and you can see a clear progression in my Twitter attitude toward this Caps playoff run.

This is admittedly the manifestation of some lingering salt at being knocked out of the playoffs by the Caps, but it has more to do with just how obnoxious Capitals and non-Capitals fans alike in D.C. have been while experiencing their first flirtation with playoff success in two decades.

The phrase “act like you’ve been there before” is a sports cliche, but it is incredibly relevant to how Capitals fans are behaving right now. This is not the reaction of a fan base who has ever been there before:

I wish I could find this display of team spirit endearing, but I just don’t. This is probably a function of being a fan of multiple teams ‚— the Steelers and Penguins, specifically — that have earned the yearly expectation that they would win their respective sports’ championships every year. As a Pens fan, one Stanley Cup win is great, but wouldn’t move the needle enough to spark a celebration like that.

Based on that reaction to winning one Stanley Cup game (their first ever at home, to be fair), it is clear the Capitals have not inspired such confidence in their fans over the years.

Now imagine being a fan of the Capitals’ biggest rival and having to endure reactions like that to the slightest amount of playoff success every time the Caps do something resembling what a professional sports team is supposed to do on its way to potentially winning the highest honor its league has to offer. It gets old REALLY fast.

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Before going on, I will concede two points:

1. I would be rooting for the Golden Knights in the Stanley Cup regardless of who they were playing. There are very few pro athletes on Earth I wish eternal happiness for more than Marc-Andre Fleury, a man who helped deliver Pittsburgh three Stanley Cups. Then there are Vegas’ cadre of other ex-Penguins like James Neal and Ryan Reaves to root for. Go Knights!

2. I find the Capitals themselves mostly inoffensive, besides Tom Wilson, of course, who spent the Caps/Pens series proving he is officially the Vontaze Burfict of the NHL (aka the guy who is out there actively trying to hurt as many players on the other team as possible). Alexander Ovechkin deserves a little postseason glory, and him remaining in contention is objectively good for the NHL.

It’s really the team’s fans and those of other teams living in the D.C./Maryland/Virginia area who are constantly begging me to root for the Capitals in the Stanley Cup finals that are dangerously raising my sodium levels.

“You live in D.C. Why wouldn’t you root for the Capitals?”

“Come on, can’t you just be happy for them? They never win anything!”

“Those Wilson hits were clean, stop being such a wimpy hockey fan.”

Those are the kinds of conversations I have had too often since the Penguins were eliminated. It’s bad enough being in the same city as the team that ruined their chance of a three-peat, but it’s never fun to be the wet blanket as everyone around you is brimming with excitement.

I experienced something similar in 2013 when the Baltimore Ravens were on their surprise Super Bowl journey. As a junior at the University of Maryland, it felt like I was the only one within 100 miles actively rooting for any outcome other than a Ravens Super Bowl win. When they did finally win the Super Bowl, I again felt like the lone annoyed outlier in a sea of jubilant purple jerseys.

At least back then no Ravens fans were asking me to root for one of my least favorite teams in sports. Capitals fans seem oblivious to why someone in their city who is usually a fan of another team would choose not to root for them in the Stanley Cup. It’s a strange phenomenon, and probably a product of not having much experience with handling postseason success.

After that Game 6 loss, I was willing to if not root for the Capitals going forward, at least entertain the notion that them winning a Stanley Cup wasn’t the worst possible outcome for my sporting fandom. If it made D.C. happy — and as a Washingtonian for a few years now, D.C. is one of the saddest sports towns you will ever find — what’s the harm?

Well, it turns out a little taste of postseason triumph is enough to make any fan base a bit too big for their bright-red britches, even one that up until this point had no idea what a Stanley Cup game victory felt like. My appreciation for the Caps’ run given their historical ineptitude went from “good for you” to “calm the heck down” really quickly.

Again, my saltiness has an obvious origin, and I am not arrogant enough to ever ask anyone to pity a Penguins fan. My only goal here is to articulate what it has been like as a fan of a team’s rival living in that city while that team is only two games away from vindicating generations of fans who have no idea how to deal with postseason success.

Capitals fans are starting to believe in something for the first time in their franchise’s history, so we’ll see how they behave if they do actually win the Stanley Cup. As a Penguins fan, watching them learn how to reckon with success is like watching a puppy learn how to walk: cute at first, but less so when it begins galavanting around the house with no signs of stopping.