The Washington Capitals are now ten games through the 2023-24 NHL season. We are roughly one-eigth of the way through the season. This is not the time to celebrate if you are a good team. This is also no time to panic or freak out if you are a fan of a bad team.
If you are a Capitals fan, you are somewhere between those two extremes. Washington is not a good team, but they are not bad either. Through the first ten games of the season the Capitals have proved to us they are a pretty average hockey team.
That’s not the worst thing to be right now either. It’s better to be average right now than poor. Just ask yourselves this. Would you rather be an average Capitals team, with a record of 5-4-1? Or would you rather perhaps be a fan of a team like the Edmonton Oilers? A team with a lot of expectations who through their first ten games are 2-7-1.
See. Being average isn’t the worst thing in the world.
To be average means you don’t have much bad that is absolutely sinking you. Maybe a defense is so bad that you’re bleeding chances against left and right. Maybe your goaltending can’t stop an oversized beach ball. Maybe nobody on your team can score a goal.
But it also means that you don’t really have anything that great that is propelling you to the top of the standings.
I think that perfectly sums up the Washington Capitals. They’re not really great at anything, but they don’t really have any fatal flaw either.
It’s been an interesting start to the season, and since we are now ten games into the campaign what better time than now to take a look at a couple of things this team has shown us.