How the Washington Capitals stayed competitive ahead of the 2024-25 season

The Washington Capitals made some big splashes this offseason and as a result are no longer the oldest team in the NHL. In fact, as far as the oldest average age goes the Caps aren't even in the top 10. That's progress.

We all know for the most part what they did in the offseason but if you're new or just coming out of hibernation the team traded Darcy Kuemper to the Los Angeles Kings for center Pierre-Luc Dubois in what hopes to provide some depth scoring.

Chris Patrick, the new GM in town, explained the move to NHL.com's Tom Gulitti

There's options that we've done in the past and other teams have done that aren't a lot of fun. That if you try to get a high pick and hope that it's the right year and you get the right guy who could be the next cornerstone of your franchise.... OR you could try to do something like this, and other teams have done this too, where you try find good players out there that maybe for whatever reason aren't working in their current situation.

Spencer Carbery would add the following about PLD:

He wants to win, and he wants to take the necessary steps and now it's up to us as a coaching staff to help him. It's on him as a player to do the necessary things and then be consistent with that on a day to day basis.

In addition to the pre draft trade for PLD the Caps also added forward Andrew Mangiapane, defenseman Jakob Chychrun, and goalie Logan Thompson during the draft weekend. The Cpas would then sign defenseman Matt Roy, and forwards Brandon Duhaime and Taylor Raddysh.

A lot of decisions will be made in training camp including the status of T.J. Oshie as we await word on whether he can return to the lineup or not. But no matter what the team is banking on making a deeper run than last season thanks to the deeper lineup. At least, that's the goal.

Carbery would add in the same interview:

Whatever the outsider world has us pegged at percentage wise of making the playoffs... And I'm not shy to say we don't have many believers again this year... It's important that we know two things: One is we are not going to catch anybody off guard. Teams are going to know, OK, this is a team that caught some teams maybe off guard last year. They were a playoff team. We need to be ready to go tonight

Carbery would conclude by saying "And two is we need to get better in a bunch of areas, especially offensively."