3 Reasons The Capitals Lost In The First Round

The Rangers Were Better

In my opinion some things deserve deeper dives than others. Why are the Toronto Maple Leafs down 3-1? At least at the time of writing this. By team you read this they may be gone 4-1. Same goes for the Winnipeg Jets, who are down 3-1 in their series with the Colorado Avalanche. Both of those teams are good teams who are facing the gentlemen's sweep. What has gone wrong with those two, very good teams?

The Washington Capitals won fifteen fewer games than the New York Rangers. The Caps won 40 games this season. Do the math, the Rangers won 55. Oh, look at that I did the math for you.

No one was giving this Capitals team a chance to win this series, and for good reason. The Rangers were the best team in the NHL, winning the Presidents Trophy this season. The Capitals were a average team at best that benefited from a very weak eastern conference this season. Bring this Capitals team into most seasons and they probably aren't really even sniffing the playoffs.

The Capitals actually played pretty well this series. I'm not sure they could have played much better. I think they gave the Rangers a good fight in all four games of this series. Then you look up and realize something. Washington led for a total of 3:21 in the series. The score was tied for 73:04 and the Rangers led for 163:35. As good as the Caps played, they still couldn't keep up.

Is this oversimplifying something? Yes. Does that make this any less true? No. The Rangers were just simply better. We all knew it, and they proved it against the Capitals in this series.