D8 EZ M2 THE WASHINGTON POST.SUNDAY, MARCH 27 , 2022
opting to replace van Riemsdyk
with Michal Kempny instead of
Matt Irwin. Van Riemsdyk is still
on injured reserve after suffering
an upper-body ailment last week.
He has yet to participate in a team
practice since his injury. He is still
listed as day-to-day.
Against Buffalo, Kempny and
Irwin both were forced to play
after Washington dressed a n un-
conventional lineup consisting of
11 forwards and seven defense-
men.
Irwin logged over 10 minutes of
ice time and had three shots on
goal, two hits and two blocked
shots. Conversely, Kempny played
just over three minutes, had zero
shots on goal and was dinged for a
minor penalty. His minor was his
third in the past two games.got to build high up how you want
to play going into the playoffs.”
Ovechkin also scored the shoot-
out game-winner in Washington’s
4-3 win in Buffalo on Friday night.
The Capitals (37-20-10) will get a
day off S unday before they play
Monday against Carolina.
The Devils (23-37-5) applied
strong pressure on Capitals goalie
Vitek Vanecek throughout, forc-
ing him to make 35 saves. Daws
stopped 18 of the 22 shots sent his
way.
The Capitals, down 2-1 entering
the third, clawed back behind
their veterans and their youth.
Rookie Connor McMichael scored
the equalizer only 2:08 into the
third period before Backstrom
and Ovechkin provided the differ-
ence.
McMichael’s tally capped an
impressive tic-tac-toe passing se-
quence on a delayed penalty. Jus-
tin Schultz made the perfect p ass
to McMichael from the left circle
to the back post for McMichael’s
easy tap-in.
McMichael, whose play has im-
proved as the season has pro-
gressed, has nine goals and nine
assists.
Both teams started slow. The
Capitals put just seven shots on
Daws in the first 20 minutes and
failed to get anything going on
their lone power play chance. The
Devils played structured in their
own zone and managed to hit the
post late in the opening frame, but
the first intermission came with
things still scoreless.
New Jersey struck just 55 sec-
onds into the second, capitalizing
on a turnover that left Jack
Hughes alone at the right circle,Backstrom said of the apples pelt-
ing the ice. “It was hilarious, I
think. And then all the players just
keep shoveling. They needed
some help. It was just an awesome
experience, I think.”
On a night that Backstrom,
known for being quiet and re-
served, was being honored for re-
cording his 1,000th career point,
his goal produced the loudest mo-
ment of the night. The rubber
apples — with N1KY written on
them — were in commemoration
of Backstrom hitting the career
milestone and were the giveaway
to fans who attended Saturday’s
game.
“To be here to share this mo-
ment with him and his family, it is
just really cool and one of those
highlights that we will have of our
career that is not necessarily
about us, but we can say we were
there and we saw it and felt the
emotion. So super cool night for
us, and we are all really proud of
Nick,” veteran winger T.J. Oshie
said.
Backstrom’s goal broke a 2-2
deadlock early in the third. Alex
Ovechkin, who was part of the
pregame celebration honoring his
longtime linemate, scored on the
power play about five minutes
later to double the lead. Ovechkin
has six goals in his past seven
games.
Jesper Bratt made things inter-
esting with his last-minute goal
off the rebound, but that was as
close as New Jersey would get.
“Everyone has stepped up,”
Backstrom said. “That’s what we
need at this time of year. You’ve
CAPITALS FROM D1
Capitals score three goals
in third period for victory
Ryan Getzlaf, Patrick Kane, Sid-
ney Crosby and Ovechkin all
filmed videos congratulating
Backstrom. Carl Hagelin, who un-
derwent eye surgery in early
March, donned a suit and
watched the ceremony from the
Capitals’ bench. Hagelin is out
indefinitely.Oshie back
Washington played with a tra-
ditional lineup of 12 forwards and
six defensemen for the first time
in three games. Oshie returned
after he was injured March 17
against Columbus. Only Nic
Dowd and Trevor van Riemsdyk —
both injured last week against
Carolina — remain out.Kempny over Irwin
The Capitals made a head-
scratching personnel decision on
the blue line against the Devils,Backstrom’s celebration
Backstrom, whose 1,000th
point came earlier this month,
was the second player in Capitals
history to record the mark. Back-
strom’s family, including his fian-
cee, three kids, parents and broth-
er, were all in attendance for the
ceremony.
Backstrom received multiple
gifts, including a Tiffany crystal, a
golden stick, custom golf clubs
from Ovechkin and John Carlson,
and a bottle of wine.
Ovechkin nearly stole the mo-
ment when he tripped and fell
during the ceremony. The Capi-
tals’ captain was handing Back-
strom’s mother a bouquet of flow-
ers when he started to walk back-
ward on the red carpet. He lost his
footing as he retreated, causing
him to lose his balance before
gracefully recovering and pre-
tending to fake a limp.where he beat Vanecek’s out-
stretched catching glove.
Tom Wilson tied it less than two
minutes later, finishing a patient
cross-crease feed from Conor
Sheary on a two-on-one rush. Wil-
son’s goal was his 20th, the third
time in his career he has reached
that mark.
The Devils retook the lead at
7:17 of the second when Damon
Severson beat Vanecek with a slap
shot through traffic.
“It wasn’t pretty, but it was
gutsy,” Capitals Coach Peter Lavio-
lette said. “Back-to-back games on
a team that’s fresh. And they’re
young, and they’re talented, and
they’re quick.... I really liked the
effort. I liked the compete. I liked
the comeback. Guys just kept dig-
ging in for the win and got it
done.”
What to know about the Capi-
tals’ game against the Devils:NICK WASS/ASSOCIATED PRESS
C apitals center Nicklas Backstrom was honored Saturday night for recording his 1,000th career point.C APITALS’ NEXT THREE
vs. Carolina HurricanesTomorrow7NBCSWvs. Minnesota WildApril 3 7NBCSWvs. Tampa Bay LightningApril 6 7:30 TNTRadio: WJFK (106.7 FM)ecosystem around us that’s bro-
ken.”
The WNBA, Englebert said, is
in the midst of a “three- to five-
year transformation” in which
part of her mission is to “disrupt
the media-rights-fee valuation” to
grow the league’s revenue. The
league recently raised $75 million
from more than a dozen inves-
tors, which Englebert has said it
would use to expand marketing
initiatives and build a sustainable
business model.
But to do that, she said, the
league needs its stars in their
WNBA uniforms all season long,
instead of showing up several
weeks into the regular season.
However, Terri Jackson, execu-
tive director of the WNBPA, char-
acterized the prioritization rules
as “unnecessarily strict” and said
the league has not done enough,
in the two years since the ratifica-
tion of the CBA, to make good on
its promises to work with FIBA,
basketball’s international govern-
ing body, and the overseas profes-
sional leagues to match up sched-
ules to avoid conflicts.
“They were adamant [prioriti-
zation] was their top priority,”
Jackson said of the WNBA’s own-
ers. “And when they introduced it,
they were clear they wanted it to
start immediately, in 2020. We
were like, ‘Absolutely not.’ That
did not make sense. We were
pretty insistent it had to be
phased in, which is where we
arrived....
“Unless the economics change
significantly, and without more
cooperation with the league and
the international leagues through
FIBA, and without greater flexi-
bility, I’m not certain this is [the
way] the league and teams will
have intended for this to play
out.”
Jackson posed a rhetorical
question: “In any other industry
is it okay to limit the earning
capacity of your employees when
they’re not scheduled to work,
when they’ve fulfilled their com-
mitments to you?”
Englebert, however, turned the
question around: The CBA, she
said, “doesn’t say you can’t play in
the offseason anywhere else. It
just says you have to come back
on time by the start of training
camp. What job did you ever have
where you didn’t have to show up
on time?”
Acknowledging the players ap-
proved the CBA in 2020 in “over-
whelming” numbers, Jackson
also said: “Do we recognize this is
part of the CBA, that we repre-
sented it to the players, that we
wrestled with it, that we pushed
back as hard as we could, and this
is where we are? Yes, we recognize
that. But as with any contract, it
can be amended.... I believe [the
owners and league] are going to
want to have the conversation
with us to rethink this.
“We’ll be open to coming back
to revisit this,” Jackson added. “I
was saying that even when we
signed it. I’m not backing out of
the deal. It’s more like: just be
careful what you ask for.”they do now, Allison Galer, an
agent who represents Chiney Og-
wumike and Liz Cambage, among
others, said: “I think there’s a
pathway to that, with the right
infrastructure that the teams and
the agents will have to provide. It
has to come from everyone proac-
tively looking for ways to make
money in the WNBA — and make
money in the WNBA offseason.
And it has to be proactive because
it’s not going to happen by itself.”Growing ‘The W’
The WNBA’s collective bar-
gaining agreement was signed in
2020, one year after the arrival of
Englebert as commissioner and
just before the onset of the pan-
demic that upended the next two
seasons. It was widely hailed at
the time as the most progressive
in professional sports, featuring
not only significant pay raises but
also a generous maternity leave, a
child-care stipend and expense
reimbursement for adoption, sur-
rogacy or infertility treatment.
That may have contributed to a
drop in the number of players
who went overseas this offseason
— down from 89 as recently as
2017-18, according to the league,
to 70 this year. (The lingering
pandemic might have also played
a role.) Among the players who
stayed back were superstars such
as Taurasi, Sue Bird, Candace
Parker, Skylar Diggins-Smith, Sa-
brina Ionescu, Elena Delle Donne
and Ogwumike. Some players re-
ceived part of the $1 million fund
the league set aside for offseason
marketing deals; others worked
as broadcasters or coaches in the
NBA; others have never played
overseas.
Less discussed at the time of
the CBA’s ratification — perhaps
because they wouldn’t kick in
until several years down the road
— were the prioritization rules.
In an interview, Englebert,
who before heading the WNBA
was the first female CEO of Delo-
itte, one of the largest multina-
tional companies in the world,
characterized the rules as a justi-
fiable ask from the league’s own-
ers in exchange for doubling the
top base salary and building in
significant raises for all players,
underscored by a 30 percent in-
crease in the league’s salary cap.
“We understand; we don’t
want to take away from their
options,” Englebert said. “But
we’ve built the only professional
women’s league to have lasted 25
years. I think we’ve earned the
trust of players.”
The WNBA will play the lon-
gest season in its history this year,
36 games per team, and Englebert
said she would love to grow the
league’s footprint even more,
both in terms of the schedule and
an expansion from the current 12
teams. But a longer schedule
would create even more conflict
with overseas leagues, which, as
she pointed out, existed long be-
fore the WNBA’s debut in 1997.
“Everyone wants to point a
finger at the league,” Englebert
said. “I always say it’s actually thehaving the summer off.” At an-
other point, she said, “I think
they’re going to be surprised how
many people choose not to play in
the WNBA.”
Wilson added: “Summers off do
sound good. I’m not going to lie.... All it takes is one person. If we
have one person do it, everyone’s
going to start thinking, ‘Hmm,
maybe I could do this, too.’ ”
Collier and Wilson, through
spokesmen for their WNBA
teams, declined to comment for
this story.
“If there are players who don’t
choose to prioritize the WNBA,
that’s a risk the owners took when
they fought for this,” said WNBA
Commissioner Cathy Englebert
of the threat of players shunning
the league in favor of their over-
seas teams. “The owners agreed
to triple the pay of the top players.
In return for that, they want to
build a league that’s prioritized.”
Last season, 55 players, includ-
ing Griner, reported late to their
WNBA teams because of overseas
commitments, according to the
Hartford Courant, and around 12
missed their teams’ regular sea-
son openers. Then there are the
players who suffer serious inju-
ries overseas — as Stewart once
did with a torn Achilles’ tendon
while playing for Russia’s Dyna-
mo Kursk, costing her the entire
2019 WNBA season — or who
become worn down from the
year-round schedule.
Agents, of course, could at-
tempt to find overseas teams will-
ing to let players leave in April to
make it back for the start of
WNBA training camp — except
that’s when many leagues are
staging their playoffs. Would any
team be willing to let one of its
best players walk away right be-
fore the biggest games of the
season?
Asked if she could envision a
future in which top players don’t
need to go overseas to earn what
ing contracts for players with
overseas teams for a 2022-23 sea-
son that starts in the fall and that
at its back end will bump up
against the 2023 WNBA season
and the new penalties.
“I defend the WNBA complete-
ly, and [league] management is
doing a great job of growing the
league,” said veteran agent Mike
Cound, whose clients include sev-
en-time WNBA all-star Candice
Dupree and four-time WNBA all-
star DeWanna Bonner. “But we’ve
got holes in this thing, because
suspending the top players
doesn’t help the league or the
teams or the fans — and it sure as
hell doesn’t help the players. My-
self and [other agents], we’re al-
ready looking for ways around
this.”
It’s unclear whether Ameri-
cans will have playing opportuni-
ties in Russia in the next Euro-
pean season; the aftermath of
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,
which ended the Russian basket-
ball season, had American play-
ers scrambling to get out of the
country and added layers of com-
plexity and peril to Griner’s pre-
dicament. But China, another
country that has historically paid
top salaries (including to Griner
in 2013 and 2014), is expected to
revive its women’s pro l eague
after a two-year hiatus caused by
the coronavirus pandemic.
In the podcast they co-host,
“Tea With A and Phee,” WNBA
stars A’ja Wilson of the Las Vegas
Aces and Napheesa Collier of the
Minnesota Lynx have spoken can-
didly about the issue of prioritiza-
tion, at times suggesting the rules
could backfire on the WNBA by
forcing players, if faced with the
choice, to keep playing overseas
and shun the WNBA.
“I feel like that was a bad
move,” Collier said at one point
regarding prioritization. “If I’m
not making that much in the
league... I’m going overseas and$1 million each per season for
superstars such as Stewart and
Griner.
That compares to a “supermax”
base salary of $228,294 in the
WNBA in 2022 (though with bo-
nuses, incentives and offseason
marketing stipends, a handful of
elite players could earn $500,000
or more). The WNBA’s average
base salary is around $130,000,
with the rookie minimum at
$60,471 and the veteran mini-
mum at $72,141.
The highest-paid NBA players,
by comparison, make in excess of
$40 million annually — or more
than two times the payroll budget
of the entire WNBA, which comes
in at around $18 million.
That helps explains why many
top players such as Griner, with a
limited number of prime athletic
years in which to earn money, rely
on overseas income, even at the
expense of rest, family time and
occasionally personal safety.
“We had to go to a communist
country to get paid like capital-
ists,” Diana Taurasi, the Mercury’s
superstar guard, famously said in
2019 of her tenure in Russia. In
2015, Taurasi skipped the WNBA
season when UMMC Ekaterin-
burg paid her to rest during its
offseason to stay fresh for the
following season.
Stewart and Griner share the
same agent, Lindsay Kagawa Co-
las of Wasserman, who was
among the many agents, team
executives and players contacted
for this story who either did not
return messages or declined to
comment. The WNBA, in consul-
tation with the State Department
and crisis-communications ex-
perts familiar with political hos-
tage situations, has asked l eague-
related personnel not to discuss
Griner or issues related to Russia.
At the same time, the issue of
prioritization has become a mas-
sive and divisive issue for the
WNBA as agents begin negotiat-exist in the WNBA but are in some
cases explicitly disallowed.
And that examination comes at
a critical inflection point for the
WNBA, with the league taking
aggressive steps to try to keep
players stateside all year long and
with player movement already
being influenced by controversial
“prioritization” rules that will
kick in beginning in 2023 and
that could force a difficult choice
for players: “The W” or their
overseas teams.
“It’s something that, if I’m
quite honest, I’m not happiest
about in our [collective bargain-
ing agreement], because it’s just
really limiting what professional
women’s basketball players can
do in their offseason and their
ability to make money overseas,”
superstar Breanna Stewart said
about those rules during a virtual
news conference with reporters
following her re-signing with the
Seattle Storm on Feb. 10.
In 2023, veteran players who
report late to their WNBA team’s
training camp because of over-
seas commitments will be fined
one percent of their salary for
each day missed and could be
suspended for the entire season if
they show up late for the regular
season. Beginning in 2024, play-
ers will be suspended for the
entire season if they show up late
for training camp. Training camp
typically begins in April, with the
regular season beginning in early
May; some European leagues,
meanwhile, feature playoffs that
can stretch deep into May.
Players with less than three
years of WNBA service, who typi-
cally play overseas as much for
the development and extra play-
ing time as for the money, are
exempt from the prioritization
rules. There are also exceptions
for national team duty ahead of
major international tourna-
ments.
Rather than seeking a long-
term deal with more security,
Stewart, 27, chose to sign a one-
year contract, in large part, she
said, because of the uncertainty
over how the prioritization rules
will play out. The CBA between
the league and the Women’s Na-
tional Basketball Players Associa-
tion, ratified in 2020, runs
through 2027.
“You’re cutting off one of my
sources of income and not substi-
tuting it,” said Stewart, the 2016
WNBA rookie of the year and
2018 MVP. “I don’t have a great
answer for what’s going to hap-
pen. But I think it’s going to affect
a lot more players in the WNBA
than people realize right now.”
‘Paid like capitalists’
Stewart and Griner, arguably
the two most dominant American
players of the past decade, were
teammates for two seasons with
UMMC Ekaterinburg, which is
owned by Russian oligarchs and
copper mining magnates and
pays the highest salaries in the
world: reportedly more than
WNBA FROM D1
Star’s arrest stirs tensions o ver WNBA players going abroad
GENNA MARTIN/ASSOCIATED PRESS
WNBA stars such as Breanna Stewart (30) and detained Brittney Griner g et much higher pay abroad.Capitals 4, Devils 3
NEW JERSEY ........................... 0 21 —3
WASHINGTON ......................... 0 13 —4
SECOND PERIOD
Scoring: 1, New Jersey, Hughes 22 (Mercer, Sharan-
govich), 0:55. 2, Washington, Wilson 20 (Sheary, Carl-
son), 2:47. 3, New Jersey, Severson 10 (Graves, Bo-
qvist), 7:17.
THIRD PERIOD
Scoring: 4, Washington, McMichael 9 (Carlson, Schultz),
2:08. 5, Washington, Backstrom 6 (Mantha), 6:56. 6,
Washington, Ovechkin 42 (Backstrom, Kuznetsov),
11:48 (pp). 7, New Jersey, Bratt 22 (Hischier, Hughes),
19:28.
SHOTS ON GOAL
NEW JERSEY ......................... 10121 6— 38
WASHINGTON ......................... 7 96 —22
Power-play opportunities: New Jersey 0 of 2; Washing-
ton 1 of 2. Goalies: New Jersey, Daws 7-8-0 (22 shots-18
saves). Washington, Vanecek 17-9-5 (38-35). A: 18,573
(18,277). T: 2:30.