Washington Capitals: How Many Moves Does Recent Playoffs Performances Demand

The Washington Capitals have been eliminated from the Stanley Cup playoffs in the first round for three consecutive seasons. If you’re a good team that’s frustrating enough. If you are “just” a good team you would like to think in three years you could find yourself winning at least one round.

Why it’s so frustrating for the Capitals and the Capitals fans is this team is not just a good team. I don’t really care who says otherwise, this is a Stanley Cup contending team. You cannot have the roster that this team has and show the potential for most of the regular season and not call this team a real threat to win the big shiny Cup at the end of the season.

Yet the results are not there. Even more annoying than the results, is the effort. I have heard a bunch of people who likely do not follow this team very often say this Capitals team should not panic and advise them to not do anything drastic this offseason.

I would partly agree. There is still a ton of talent on this team. You do not need to go into full tear it down/rebuild mode. While I agree there, I disagree on the lack of urgency some seem to show when talking about this franchise.

More from Editorials

• Alex Ovechkin will score 50 goals in 2023-24
• It’s time for Capitals fans to chill out with the Anthony Mantha hate
• The Capitals Have Several Potentially Bad Contracts
• Nic Dowd looks to show reliability
• Dylan Strome’s Contract Could Be A Steal For The Capitals

The reason you make a big change (or more), in my opinion, is the effort this team has shown since winning the Stanley Cup in 2018.

During regular seasons this team rarely puts together sixty minute efforts. Look, it’s hard to play well for a full game. During games you have two teams who are fighting for the same thing. You will have peaks and valley’s during a game.

This past season under new coach Peter Laviolette I thought the effort throughout games was better. The previous two seasons under Todd Reirden the Capitals would play an excellent fifteen or twenty minutes and in doing so would cruise to a win or make a comeback. That’s how talented this team is. They don’t need a full sixty minutes. They can blitz you for a short time, overwhelm you and get a W.

However as we saw in the previous two seasons, come playoff time, that came back to bite them. The Hurricanes in 2019 and the Islanders in 2020 outhustled them (and very badly at some points) and took those series in large part thanks to that fact.

The effort was once again in this past playoffs not there. I think this year you have to give the team a bit of a break. The amount of injuries, and not only injuries but injuries to key players, was a bit much. Alex Ovechkin, Nicklas Backstrom, T.J Oshie, Lars Eller, John Carlson all hurt and Evgeny Kuznetsov and Ilya Samsonov not available due to COVID issues.

The team won’t use injuries as an excuse, and some fans won’t allow them to either. But the names on that list are pretty absurd. If you’re going to talk about a lack of effort, maybe that is because all of your teams stars had something bothering them.

On top of bad efforts for three straight playoffs, however, being banged up going into the playoffs brings up another point. Age. Pretty much all of the Capitals stars are on the wrong side of thirty and in Ovechkin’s case on the wrong side of thirty-five.

Backstrom is 33, he’ll turn 34 early next season, Oshie is 34, turning 35 in December, Eller is 32 and Carlson is 31.

You have to start getting younger. The Capitals do have some promising prospects in the system, you have to think they will get plenty of opportunities next season.

Some veterans are likely on their way out, such as Zdeno Chara and whoever gets picked in the upcoming expansion draft.

With those moves, how many other moves do the recent playoff performances demand? In my opinion, you have to make a move or two based strictly on the effort. You cannot give lackluster efforts in three straight playoffs and stand pat. Banging your head against a brick wall and expecting it to go away is not going to work. Why would you bring back an entire team that has given you poor efforts for three straight seasons?

The question officially here is how many moves do these performances demand? However, the next question needs to be, what can they do?

The only sensible move you can make for this team is trading one of your top two centers in Evgeny Kuznetsov. The 29-year-old is possibly the face of lack of effort on this team, he has a big cap hit of $7.8 per year and he is getting less and less reliable both on and off the ice.

If you trade Kuznetsov you’re selling low. He put up 29 points in 41 games this season. That put him on pace for 58 points if he played in 82 games. That being said, he missed 15 games this season so if he played in 67 games he would of had 47 points. In a “full” season that would have been his lowest point total since the 2014-15 season, his first full NHL season where he scored 37 points. In 63 games in the 2019-20 season he scored 52 points.

With his effort a question on most nights, his offense declining, his off ice problems becoming more and more of a worry and his bigger cap hit, he is possibly a very hard guy to trade. Even harder if you consider that Kuznetsov has a 15 team no trade list.

If you’re trading a top six center you need to get something good in return. Can the Capitals get something good for Kuznetsov? If you can’t get a good return for him I’m not sure you trade him. So what else can you do?

Keep in mind Ovechkin is likely getting a raise from $9.5 to over $10m a year making the cap situation worse.

Maybe some guys you can move just to free up some cap space is someone like Carl Hagelin and his $2.75m cap hit? Maybe you move higher priced defensemen like Brenden Dillon at $3.9m or Justin Schultz at $4.0m? Both of the latter two I mention signed this past off-season. Trading guys you signed just one year ago isn’t a great look. However, if you leave them unprotected in the expansion draft that is one way to free up some space.

So how many moves does the recent playoff performances demand? Other than the obvious move, which may be hard to pull off, what else can you do? After three somewhat lifeless postseason performances you can’t go into the next season with mostly the same team. You can’t do the same thing and expect different outcomes.

Moves need to be made and it will be interesting to see what this management team, led by general manager Brian MacLellan, will do.