Amid the heartbreak inside the visiting dressing room at Madison Square Garden, the last player left talking began to laugh. It was a chuckle twinged with dejection, the kind when your mind can’t think of anything else to do. The Washington Capitals’ season had ended, one goal separating them from the New York Rangers on Wednesday night, one goal separating them from the New York Rangers in the entire Eastern Conference semifinals. The series had reached the maximum, stuffed with madness and comebacks and heroes and now, with the rest of his teammates gone, a laugh from Joel Ward.

“Seven games, overtime,” he said. “It doesn’t get any closer than that, I think. We went to seven games, overtime. That’s pretty close. We had couple good shifts, chances, and they capitalized on the chances at the end.”

Another second-round exit, another notch on the bedposts of however many reputations – fair of unfair – will continue to shadow this core group. It happened thanks to two icings, a battle after a faceoff, a bombing one-timer that deflected off something on its way toward the net and the beach-ball rebound that hopped to Derek Stepan, waiting at the backdoor to bring the Rangers into the conference finals for the second straight season, after becoming the first NHL team to erase 3-1 series deficits in consecutive years.

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