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.

Staying Healthy

I don’t have to remind Capitals fans how badly their team got bitten by the injury bug last year. They started the year injured with big names like Nicklas Backstrom and Tom Wilson missing the start and things just never really seemed to get better. At least not for a longer period of time.

Again, every team will need to avoid this if they have any kind of ambition for that season. Washington is no different. But can they?

I have been saying this for a couple of seasons now. The older a team gets, and the older their most important players get, the more you open yourself up to injuries derailing your team and season.

The older you get it’s harder to fight off injuries. The smaller injuries may just take a little longer to heal to where you can be an affective player again. Those smaller knocks you used to be able to shake off in a few days may now take a couple of weeks.

Just look at the ages of the Capitals most important players. Alex Ovechkin, 38 when the season gets going. Backstrom is 35, T.J. Oshie is 36, John Carlson is 33, Darcy Kuemper is 33. Even some bigger role players like Nic Dowd and Nick Jensen, Dowd being 33 and Jensen being 32. Heck, even Kuznetsov is now on the wrong side of thirty at 31. You could also look at Max Pacioretty who I think most people would hope he could be a key player for the Capitals this year. He has had injury problems in the past and very recent past, and he is already 34-years-old. And he won’t even be able to start this season healthy. He’s still recovering from his injury he suffered last season.

Every team needs to avoid the injury bug. The Capitals are no different. The age of this team scares me though. Can they stay healthy?

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.