Local father/son fans cheer the Capitals on toward Stanley Cup glory

With the Washington Capitals vying to win the first Stanley Cup in franchise history, two intrepid Cap fanatics drove into a fired up nation’s capital from Front Royal on Saturday, June 2, for the third game in the best of seven finals series.

“Let’s Go Caps!” the Malcolm Barrs, Sr. and Jr., chanted upon arrival along with several thousand fans dressed in their team’s familiar red jerseys outside the arena, and another 20,000 or so already inside. With the home team winning this third game 3-1 against the first-year expansion Las Vegas Golden Knights, the Caps now lead the final series 2 games to 1.

And as the Caps have marched closer than ever before to the coveted Stanley Cup – they were swept by Detroit’s Red Wings in their only other finals appearance, circa 1998 – the ticketless crowd outside the arena, or inside when the home team is on the road, has grown exponentially to watch on giant television screens as the games unfold.

And it has been D.C. United – with a nod to the home professional soccer franchise – as D.C. sports fans of all stripes have joined the mounting championship frenzy, as no other professional Washington sports franchise has had a team in the title round, never mind winning top honors for their sport, for more than 30 years.

Silhouetted against the ice from up on high, our Malcolms Sr. and Jr. are primed for game 3, AND a Stanley Cup title run – talk about painting the ‘town’ red.

Our local dad-son combo riding the red tidal wave of excitement is led by Malcolm Barr Sr. of Rockland. At a spry 85, Malcolm Sr. has been a Caps fan since the team’s first game in the mid-1970s. And fortuitously for Malcolm the elder, Malcolm Junior, now 33 and a U.S. Air Force veteran of the Iraq war now doing private sector intelligence work at Langley Air Force Base, was able to cop hard-to-come-by, and I am told expensive, tickets earlier in the week.

“We decided at the last minute to try and go. It was a sort of a milestone for the two of us. I’d raised my son in the shadow of the Caps, so to speak, and we thought it to be the trip of a lifetime to see a finals game together on the verge of history. So, we grabbed the tickets and went,” Malcolm Sr. said.

Of the experience, only enhanced by the 3-1 victory giving the Caps a Stanley Cup finals series 2 games to 1 lead, Malcolm Sr. added, “Being there was beyond exciting – sort of like a Super Bowl experience, a sports bonding moment between father and son, I guess you could say.”

By coincidence, Barr Sr. said, the “nose bleed” seats they occupied were in Section 424, the same section – but a different stadium – that season tickets assigned to him in 1976 were in – no sense in overlooking any lucky omens.

“He could climb the steps a little easier then, I guess,” said Malcolm Jr., “but he made it pretty well this time and it was pretty cool doing our high fives when the Caps scored their three goals. Now all we’ve gotta do is win two more games out of four!”

Game 4, the second in Washington before the teams return to Vegas, is Monday, June 4. Maybe they’ll be satisfied watching the rest of the series on TV – BUT now they’ve got those vivid, live, in-arena memories to stoke the man-cave experience.

And as the Malcolms Junior and Senior reminded me to conclude the interview for this story, GO CAPS!!!