The Capitals Are A Team Of Many "Ifs" Going Into Next Season

It's one of my favorite things to do when trying to figure out where a team currently is. Trying to figure out what the questions of the team are. More specifically, what are the "ifs"? If this were to happen how good can things turn out to be? If that happens what could go wrong? The more "ifs" the more that needs to go right for your team to be a good team.

Every team has these ifs. Some have a lot, some have big ones, some have small ones, but they all have them. In my eyes the Washington Capitals have a lot of questions going into next season, and a lot of those are really big.

So what are these questions?

Injuries

Now I'm starting this off by cheating a bit, because this goes for pretty much every sports team. But it doesn't make it any less true, it's always one of the biggest questions, why not start off with it then.

The Capitals are a team that have been bit by the injury bug too. If what happened last season happens again this season can the Caps survive that again?

If this Capitals team is similar to last season in terms of who is on the team and how they performed last season can they survive a big injury? What if Ovechkin were to go down for an extended amount of time? Would the Caps be okay if Dylan Strome got hurt and was out a while? How would the defense do without John Carlson?

Is T.J. Oshie coming back? If he does can you rely on him? Has Nicklas Backstrom already been gotten by injuries? It seems like it.

Injuries happen. It is not often teams go through a full hockey season without having to face at least one stretch of injury concerns. If or when that happens how much will it hurt (no pun intended) the team?