How Lucky Do The Capitals Need To Get To Win The Stanley Cup This Season?
The Washington Capitals look like they have a pretty good team going into the 2022-23 NHL season. It looks like team management has done all they can to put this team in a very good position to make a run this season. We will see how the season plays out, but on paper this team looks like it should be a contender.
Sports can be cruel though. As Capitals fans should probably know, there have been countless great teams that did not end up winning a championship. Some of these teams never won a title, others just took a lot longer than fans would have wanted. Like the Capitals in 2018.
You can build a great team. At the end of the day winning a championship takes more than that. Something that it takes that you can never control is luck.
Lets go back to the 2010 Capitals team. If that Presidents’ Trophy winning team dodges the Montreal Canadiens in the first round could they have gone all the way? What if instead of playing Halak and the Habs they play Michael Leighton or Brian Boucher and the Philadelphia Flyers? Or what if they play the Rangers who just missed the playoffs that season?
The Canadiens made the playoffs by one point that season. One more bad result somewhere over 82 games and the Capitals avoid playing them in round 1. Is that the difference between a first round loss and a Stanley Cup? Who knows. Maybe they win the whole thing, maybe they get swept in the second round.
Another team I like to look at when thinking about luck and winning a championship is the 2012 San Francisco Giants. I won’t bore Washington and Capitals fans with details there but that team had a lot of questions that needed a positive answer to go on their run that season. There were probably about six, seven or maybe eight big questions and you could easily argue all of them ended positively.
For all of those questions to end with a yes, that is insanely lucky.
The Washington Capitals in my mind have some questions that need to be answered this season too. If they don’t get answered with a yes can they go on to win the Stanley Cup this season? Well, lets take a look at some of these questions.
Team Health
This is a question I think every team has to ask. Injuries can kill seasons or playoff runs. This is not exclusive to the Capitals. The Caps are entering the season missing some big pieces, some more likely to return sooner than others.
This is a team whos stars are getting older. Getting older doesn’t mean an injury is inevitable but they do get harder to avoid or shake off when they do happen.
What happens if the seemingly unbreakable Ovechkin breaks? That would be heart breaking for multiple reasons. At the end of the day he is a guy you cannot replace.
T.J. Oshie always seems to be dealing with something. What if he goes down for extended amounts of time? What if John Carlson takes a bad shot to the foot and misses a bunch of games? What if Kuemper gets hurt?
There are others, and we will get into that in a little bit but I think health remains a massive question for this team. Can the Capitals avoid another big injury and can the veterans fight off the little nagging injuries or will they slow the team down?
Goaltending
This goes back to what we said at the very beginning. Management has done all they can here. Goaltending has been a question for the Washington Capitals going all the way back to Braden Holtby’s last season in D.C. Ilya Samsonov and Vitek Vanecek are both gone, and in comes reigning Stanley Cup champion Darcy Kuemper.
On paper this issue has been fixed. But as the old saying goes, games are not played on paper. How many times has a no brainer move turned into a move that didn’t end up working? More times than most fans and management teams care to remember. For whatever reason sometimes things just don’t work out.
I think we are all confident this won’t be an issue for the Capitals. With essentially three hundred games played in his career Kuemper has a GAA of 2.48 and a save percentage of .918. He has proven he is a pretty good NHL goalie.
His numbers are iffy in the playoffs however. In 34 career playoff games he has a 2.78 GAA and a .908 save percentage. Not terrible, but then you can go back to Ilya Samsonov and his stats. His GAA is 2.98 and .907%.
Washington also has to look at their backup position. If Kuemper were to struggle or get hurt and miss some times how does Charlie Lindgren or somebody else play?
The Capitals look like a good team, but Kuemper won’t have a team as stacked as the Colorado Avalanche were last season playing in front of him.
I don’t think this is going to be a big issue any longer, but the Capitals goaltending still needs to prove some things.
Center Depth
This one question is really a bunch of questions crammed into one big one. Looking at the Capitals lineup the center position looks to be good. Kuznetsov, Strome, Eller and Dowd. A solid lineup no doubt. But if you think this lineup doesn’t have questions in it I then have questions for you.
Evgeny Kuznetsov has proven to be a streaky player game to game let alone season to season. He had a good year last year, can he do it again? The Capitals probably need him this season maybe more than they did heading into last season. If he doesn’t play well then what?
What will Dylan Strome look like in Washington? This looks like a terrific signing. But most of Strome’s best hockey, at least in terms of point production, came when he was playing on a line that included Patrick Kane and Alex DeBrincat. We all know the greatness of Kane on the ice and DeBrincat quietly goes out there every year and gets close to scoring forty goals. Strome won’t play with players like that on the Capitals.
Lars Eller had a rough season last season. A late season surge helped his stats look better at the end. He scored 8 points in 14 games in April.
Eller had to face some COVID struggles last season. He tested positive for the virus twice and both of those times on the road leaving him stranded in that city.
Was last season a fluke? Or have we seen the start of his decline?
Nic Dowd is really the only center we don’t have questions about. He is solid, we know how he is going to play, there are not questions here.
Your fourth line center being the only non question concerns me. Can this end up all OK? Absolutely. Kuznetsov could continue his good play from last year, or maybe be even better. Strome could finally find a place in the NHL and start a very successful NHL career. Eller could rebound and be one of the best third line centers again. Or maybe someone else jumps in a center spot and thrives, like a Connor McMichael.
Again, on paper this all looks somewhat good. But one domino falling could lead to a chain reaction. Until the centers prove that they are in fact a strength on this Capitals team I think we have to go into this season with an eye on it.
Aging Stars Decline
This is a question a lot of teams have to deal with. The Penguins could be asking that right now. The Bruins should probably be wondering this. Maybe the Kings are as well. They have young pieces but Kopitar and Doughty are now getting older. The other California teams asked this question for years. Thornton Marleau, Getzlaf, Perry, Kesler. The Canucks with Kesler as well and the Sedin’s and Edler.
If you’re a good team for a long period of time, you will have to face this at some point. The Capitals are there now.
Ovechkin is now 37-years-old. He is much closer to declining than he is to being at peak power. Still one of the very best, obviously. But we are now well over ten years out from him scoring over one hundred points. Can he keep up his goal scoring pace? It’s hard to bet against him. But if he took a step back to “only” forty goals would it shock you? It shouldn’t.
It probably isn’t fair to point out Backstrom, but he will be turning 35 soon. If he can play this season what will he look like? Especially being older now and coming off a big hip injury and surgery.
Can the 35-year-old soon to be 36 Oshie keep it up? Can we easily count on him scoring 20+ goals and about 50+ points?
John Carlson is not that high in age yet, but he is creeping into his mid thirties now. I have great confidence in him continuing to do what he does, but we’re not too far off from asking when he starts to take a dip in production.
We’ve already talked about Eller. In my opinion he has been one of the very best third line centers. Was his down year last year a one year thing? Or is the 33-year-old starting to show what he will be going forward?
Young Players Stepping Up
This goes hand in hand with the previous question. If the stars productions starts to dip a little bit can the younger guys step up?
Connor McMichael looked good last season. Now it’s time for him to take that step up. This season he needs to continue to look good but instead of just 9 goals and 18 points in 68 games we need to see him take a step up. Double that production or get somewhere close. 16-22 goals and 40+ points.
Can Hendrix Lapierre grab a roster spot? If he can what can he do at the NHL level?
Can Fehervary build off of last season?
The Capitals do have some names in the prospect pool. Just like everybody else though, they are just that right now. In the hockey world they are just names that have yet to prove anything.
At some point, for this franchise to continue to win some of them will have to prove something. Hopefully they will not be asked to prove a ton this season. If they are asked to do a lot that probably means the team needs them which likely means one of two thing. The team is injured, or the stars aren’t putting up the numbers we are used to seeing from them.
That’s why I put those two questions in this list and that’s also why this becomes a question. Hopefully the Capitals young players don’t need to take a big step up. But there are two avenues to this problem. Seeing that there are two roads to this I think you have to keep an eye on the younger guys.
There you have it. The Capitals have at least five big questions going into this season. Quite frankly it is probably more than five since the center position alone has at least three questions built into it.
To win championships teams need luck. You need luck in December avoiding injuries. You need the puck to bounce your way in March getting you a win and avoiding a different team in the playoffs. When the big games start you need the referee to miss an obvious penalty call on your team. Or maybe you need a puck to hit two post before bouncing out instead of bouncing in.
You also need questions that your team has to turn into a positive. What if Kuznetsov has a great season, Strome turns into a great second line center and McMichael steps in and excels in a 3C spot? The team stays somewhat healthy and the stars continue to put up excellent stats? The goaltending not only improves but becomes a strength?
If all of that happens you have to consider that Capitals are one of the very best teams in the NHL and are a serious threat to bring home Lord Stanley again.
If some of these questions go against them though, who knows what this season will bring. That is honestly one of the reasons sports can be so much fun to follow. None of us has any idea what to expect.
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Things look good for the Washington Capitals right now. But for them to have an ending that they and the fans dream about they will need some luck.