Washington Capitals: 3 Reasons Why This Team Cannot Win The Stanley Cup

With every passing day and every sleep we get closer and closer to the NHL season and Washington Capitals hockey. As of writing this we are 34 days away from the first game of the season for the Caps. Good news for you, you will be reading this at a later date. The first game is even closer now.

We just got done explaining why we think this Capitals team can win the Stanley Cup. If you didn’t read that, you can check that out here.

Bottom line this is a good hockey team. They are going to win a lot of hockey games during the season and for the majority of the season, if not the entire season, they will be considered major threats to win the Stanley Cup.

But this is the NHL. Every team has holes, every team has some weaknesses. Rarely do you get a situation like the Tampa Bay Lightning of the last couple of season where you look at the team and you cannot find a weakness. We do not have that this season, and that means the Washington Capitals have some holes and weaknesses.

There are plenty of reasons to believe in this Caps team, but there are areas of concern. What are those reasons, and why can’t this Capitals team win the Stanley Cup?

Effort

This is something I’ve been harping on for several seasons now. Ever since the Capitals won the Stanley Cup in 2018 the effort has been so-so. When you have a great team and the talent like Washington has that kind of effort will win a lot of games during the regular season.

Then come playoff time, oy!

It’s been two or three very poor efforts at the most important time of the year for this franchise. The Capitals were better than the Hurricanes in 2019 and when they gave the effort they looked good. Unfortunately, they didn’t give the effort nearly enough and they lost in seven games. Then nearly nobody showed up in the 2020 bubble and they get eliminated in five games vs the New York Islanders.

This past season I give the team a little bit of a pass. It was a weird season, a short season, and a ton of guys were banged up at the absolute worst possible time. Still, there were large chunks of time vs Boston where the team just got out hustled which just cannot happen come playoff time.

I’ve asked this ridiculous question earlier. Is this Capitals team happy winning just one Stanley Cup? We all know the answer to that question. Of course they aren’t. But if that is the case, why have they played so poorly in the playoffs. Why is the one thing that should be a guarantee, effort, a question with these guys?

Until this team can prove that they can give a good effort every night it has to be considered a weakness and a worry. Other teams know if they play hard and play fast they can beat this Capitals team. The Caps have to match that effort or they won’t get close to the Cup.