The Capitals Should Not Be Big Buyers This Off-Season

Focus on the future

While they are not really rebuilding, this is still a Caps team that needs to focus on the future and the young guys they have. They need to focus on guys like Connor McMichael, Hendrix Lapierre, Ivan Miroshnichenko, Aliaksei Protas, and you could throw Ryan Leonard in there as well. While you should never give jobs to people, they should need to go out and earn them, these are the guys you need to be giving every opportunity to succeed in the NHL.

Compare that to other things fans have said or written recently. What are some fans saying? Things like, "The Capitals should look into acquiring Mitch Marner from the Leafs!" or, "The Caps need to go out and sign a top free agent with all of our cap space. Someone like Sam Reinhart or Jake Guentzel!" why?

This is what I was saying earlier about knowing where you are in a process or in a project. That's not where the Capitals are right now. Teams like Florida, and Dallas and the others we mentioned need to be focusing on those guys. They are the contenders. Washington isn't and if they sign or get the top players they probably still aren't.

We don't know what Washington is yet, so why are we wasting money and cap space? It's easy to look at "bright shiny object" and get blinded by it's beauty. It's easy to see the light at the end of a tunnel and get excited.

We don't know if any of the Capitals young players are going to turn into anything yet. All of the guys we've talked about, with the exception of Leonard, have proven that they can play at the NHL level. There have been countless players in the history of all sports that have proven they can play at the highest level. That didn't mean they were great at the highest level.