What Needs To Go Right For The Capitals To Compete Next Season

Every team, or at least every fanbase of every team needs to answer this question before every season. The answer to the question actually isn’t really an answer, it’s a series of questions. Oh life how funny you can be sometimes. It doesn’t really matter how good your team is. Every team will have some kind of goal.

It can be the end of a rebuild and wanting to take that next step. It can be taking that next step and now becoming a contender. Then of course it can be we’re a contender and we need to win this season.

Where do the Washington Capitals stand in their mindset? I don’t think it is much of a secret they want to be competing. They want to be a very good team and make deep playoff runs. Is this team good enough?

Well if one thing is for sure it’s this. This team has a lot of questions. Some teams have a lot of questions, others have just a few. The Caps definitely fall on the, “they have a lot of questions” side of the field.

For the Capitals to compete again they are going to need most these questions to have a positive outcome. Is that likely? Well, I suppose you can be the judge of that when we talk about some of the questions. But, the more questions and the more questions you need to go right the more unlikely it is things will go well. Lets just take a look at some of these questions.

I want to point out that I am writing this in early August. We don’t know exactly what this team will look like yet, so I will not go into a ton of detail here. We may revisit this later when we have a better idea what the roster looks like on opening night.

I also want to start with something that every single team in every sport will have to answer and get the easy one out of the way early.

Goaltending

This is another one that I think most teams need a good answer on if they have any hope. Last season for the Capitals I would say the goaltending was fine. That was about it. It was an upgrade from previous seasons. But after going and probably getting the best free agent goalie on the market last season in Darcy Kuemper I think you would have liked to see better.

The position and play wasn’t bad. I’m not sure I would ever call it a weakness. But, again, it was just fine. Which when you tried really hard to upgrade that position and it turns out just fine. Kind of disappointing no?

Kuemper’s stats weren’t awful. Last season he posted a 2.87 GAA with a save percentage of .909%. The save percentage is actually pretty good considering his higher GAA. That average needs to come down though. 2.87 is just too high. Especially for a team that had and might continue to have some offensive questions.

Charlie Lindgren was up and down. He started the season well. In his first 17 games he had a 2.60 GAA with a .913 save percentage. Then for the rest of the season, or his last 14 games, he had a 3.05 average with a save percentage just under .900 at 899%.

I’ve heard some hockey people out there call the Capitals goaltending a weakness. I just think that is wrong. But I think what I said earlier is the correct way to look at it. The Caps tried so hard to make that position a strength, and it just simply wasn’t. It was fine. And for the Capitals to jump back into contender status they need the goalies to be better than fine.

Ovechkin Cannot Decline

What would happen to this team if the greatest goal scorer in the world and his body finally decided, “You know what, it’s time to calm down.”? Instead of being a forty of fifty goal scorer what if time started creeping up on the soon to be 38-year-old and he was only able to pot around thirty-five?

Thirty-five? That is still an awesome season for most. But for the Capitals that is about ten goals you’re missing now that you have come expect. Someone else will have to make up for that and this was a team with some offensive troubles last season.

It is really weird that a team that is trying to win is still relying on Ovechkin who is pretty close to forty years old now. At some point you have to get younger and the younger players have to contribute.

They haven’t gotten too much younger, the younger guys have not stepped up enough and here we are. The Capitals need their 38-year-old to keep putting up forty maybe fifty goal seasons.

If Ovechkin were to finally take a step back this season (it’s going to happen at some point folks) can the Capitals survive that? Say the Caps cannot get a good answer on the two things we just talked about. They are injured again and the goaltending remains average. What if Ovechkin takes the slightest step back?

This will be the question surrounding Ovechkin for the rest of his career. How long can he fight off Father Time?

Can Backstrom Improve

You could just stick this one in the injury department but I thought it deserved it’s own question. Nicklas Backstrom had one heck of an injury and you could definitely tell, both before and after the surgery he had it was slowing him down.

For the Capitals to return to the top of the leaguethey are going to need Backstrom to return to his former form.

Now I am not talking he needs to get back to 22 or 23-year-old Backstom, put up one hundred points and be one of the best players in the league again. But you would have to hope he can give you sixty points at the very least be a good two way center and be a difference maker most nights.

The problem with him the last few seasons was you could just see him on the ice, and he was simply too slow. You could see him trying his best, but the younger, faster guys would just get the better of him. That’s not an insult. That’s time. He was 34-35 with a bad hip injury.

The question becomes, with time continuing to go forward, not backward, how much better is that going to get? The Capitals will probably need him to step up, but can he?

The Young Players Need To Step Up

If guys like Backstrom and Ovechkin finally start to get tackled by Father Time the Capitals are going to need some of their higher end prospects to start making a difference at the NHL level.

Connor McMichael has had his chance in the NHL. You can and probably should argue, this year it is pretty much the “put up or shut up” year. If he can’t prove himself to be a no doubter NHLer, in the lineup every night this season, that could be it for him in D.C. Congrats, you’ve done OK in the AHL, you’ve won some things. But that does next to nothing in the NHL. He’s 22, will be 23 in the middle of next season. It’s time.

Will Ivan Miroshnichenko be able to play games with the team this season? If and likely when he does, will he be a difference maker?

What will Hendrix Lapierre look like when he gets NHL time again. He is one of the top prospects for the Caps. At what point does he start pushing for a spot.

Can Protos turn into an effective NHL player? He had moments last season with Washington where he looked pretty good. But never was able to turn that into much, scoring just 4 goals and 15 points in 58 games. Can he take that next step?

Do you also look at younger no doubter NHLers like Rasmus Sandin and Martin Fehervary? It’s time for them to take the leadership away from John Carlson. It’s not that the Caps have to move on from Carlson, but they should start making this their D and taking a ton of pressure off of number 74. If they can, does that make the D a lot more deep?

The Capitals have some good young players and they have been there for a while. It’s just time for one of them (or more) to finally take the chance they are given and run wild with it. Because some have gotten that chance, and have just done nothing with it. This is potentially a big year for some of these young players this season. Like I said earlier, it’s time to prove it for some of these guys, or maybe it’s time to find work elsewhere.

Max Pacioretty

We’ve talked a little bit about him already but I think he needs more words on him.

The signing of Pacioretty was a weird one to me. When I saw the Capitals signed him I just kind of rolled my eyes. It was kind of a typical Capitals move of late. They come out and say one thing, such as, we need to get younger and we need to stay healthy. Then they go out and sign a 34-year-old who has had his history with injuries and will miss the start of next season…due to injury. So instead of doing what they say they want to do, they continue to go out and do the opposite.

At the end of the day, it’s not the worst signing though. He signed a cheap one year $2 million deal and he is obviously a good NHL player. It’s a pretty ideal low risk high reward kind of situation for Washington.

The question is, is it worth it? Will he be able to stay healthy. He is coming off two torn Achilles. When he comes back can he find his former form? He’s a player who has scored over thirty goals six times in his career. That’d be great for the Capitals if they knew he could get there again.

But this goes with the other questions. If Ovechkin takes a step back they might need Pacioretty. If Ovechkin takes a step back and the young guys don’t take a step up they will really need Pacioretty. If this older Caps team can’t stay healthy you will almost need to rely on Pacioretty. Can you rely on him with his injury history?

Pacioretty might be one of the more fascinating situations to watch on the Capitals this coming season. Low risk high reward, but the team might need him more than they should need to.

Kuznetsov

Need I say more? Will he even be on the team? The Capitals still seem like they want to trade him. It seems like he may want to be traded. It seems like it almost happened at the draft when these two parties parted ways. But here we are. He is still a member of the Capitals and as long as he is the team really, really needs him to perform.

I hate to put to much on one player on a hockey team, but when Kuznetsov is going this team tends to be really hard to beat. If you have Ovechkin doing his thing, and if Backstrom can do his thing and your team is able to stay healthy and now you have Strome and Oshie and Wilson and maybe Pacioretty can come in and do well and maybe one of the young guys comes in and cements a spot for himself and Carlson can put up points from the back and maybe Sandin too then you can add Kuznetsov being an impact player?

That was a very, very long sentence basically just saying, if a lot of things go right and Kuznetsov plays well, this team suddenly can look really deep.

On the other hand, if all Kuznetsov wants to do it slip on a jersey and float on the ice almost every night, the Caps might have some issues.

If all of those other things have some bad answers and Kuznetsov has another lame season they’re in for another long year. Last year they did get bad answers, and Kuznetsov did have a bad year. We saw how that turned out.

He has top ten talent in my humble opinion. If he wants to he can be among the very best this game and league has to offer. Just for whatever reason it rarely seems like he wants to. Most nights you have to go looking for 92 on the ice. He doesn’t stand out nearly as much as he should with the talent he has.

If Kuznetsov has a good full year. Not a good half year like a couple of seasons ago, but a good full season and hopefully playoffs, the Capitals can jump back into contender status.

The unfortunate thing is that this is a question. You have to ask if one of the best Capitals players will show up every season and every night. When he doesn’t, which is most nights, the Caps have a tougher time. They need him next season. Again, assuming he remains with the club.

That’s all we’ll talk about for now. There are still plenty of questions. I can think of at least two big ones we didn’t talk about here. We did not discuss the new head coach and coaching staff. We also didn’t talk about Anthony Mantha. Those are two big questions that need to be answered as well.

The Capitals have somewhere around ten big questions going into this season. In my opinion most of these need to be answered positively for them to get back to a good spot. If they get half of these questions ending in a positive way I’m still not sure that would be enough to get back into the playoffs. There are too many good teams ahead of them and some teams behind them that are coming.

Every team has questions going into their seasons. Some just have more than others. The Capitals have a lot of questions, and they need a lot of those questions to be answered positively if they want to contend again this coming season.