The Penguins had a great time visiting the White House in October, celebrating their Stanley Cup championship with Barack Obama.
Obama speechwriter Stephen Krupin hated it. Turns out, Krupin is a Capitals fan and had taken the assignment assuming the Capitals would win the Stanley Cup.
Krupin described the experience — writing a cheery, positive speech about a team he hated — in a Washington Post story Thursday, headlined “The one speech I wrote for Obama that I didn’t believe in.”
“Last October, I helped President Obama honor the Stanley Cup champion Pittsburgh Penguins. And I hate the Pittsburgh Penguins. ... No team is more responsible for our inferiority complex than the Pittsburgh Penguins, who’ve had our number eight of the nine times we’ve met them in the postseason.”
In writing Obama’s speech, which included a pretty good joke about Phil Kessel being a Stanley Cup champion, Krupin had to call the Penguins “villainous” front office, “from whom I learned begrudgingly about the commendable deeds this contemptible team performed in the community.”
“...the idea of helping the leader of the free world gush about the 2016 champs — a team that had eliminated the Caps en route to the Cup — felt downright profane.”
Krupin did add a line to Obama’s speech in which the former President questioned why winning the Presidents’ Trophy – the award the Capitals won for a second consecutive season this year after collecting the most regular season points – “is not the highest award a team can win.”
Krupin called that line “therapy,” helping him cope with the “futility of winning a concession prize and the frustration of another season of unrealized potential.”
He — like so many other Capitals fans — hopes his team can realize its potential this season and reach the Eastern Conference Finals for the first time since 1998. Game 1 of the Eastern Conference semifinal between the Penguins and Capitals is Thursday night.
And as for the speech he wrote last fall that praised the Penguins? Krupin is calling on the “good Lord Stanley” to forgive his betrayal of his favorite team.
First Published: April 27, 2017, 3:47 p.m.
