The Future Is Now
One way or another I think this season will be the start of something. If the veterans on this team can stay productive, if the new guys come in and end up being key players on this team they could climb their way back towards the top of the NHL standings.
The #Gr8 is back in the DMV pic.twitter.com/a3ZYnhWck8
— Washington Capitals (@Capitals) September 6, 2024
If neither of those things happen, if the vets fall off and the new guys have trouble finding their rhythm here, it feels like the Caps might have to consider blowing things up and giving the team to the young guy.
Obviously we hope it's the first option. We hope the new guys can come in and bring new life to this team and then the coaches and management are able to gradually bring in young guys, or maybe even trade a young guy or two to take a run at a Cup, who knows.
But even if that doesn't happen, the future is still kind of exciting.
The Capitals have a good amount of young guys who could be ready to make an impact very soon. This season we should continue to get good looks at Connor McMichael and Hendrix Lapierre. Can they take the next steps and start to be key players?
Waiting in the wings you got guys like Ivan Miroshnichenko, Ryan Leonard. Honestly, the Capitals have a lot to mention and a lot to like when it comes to their prospect pool.
Watching these guys break into the NHL will be a lot of fun. Whether they trickle in over the next couple of season or are forced into action maybe sooner than the front office would prefer thanks to the team not doing well enough. The future is almost upon us.
What this Capitals team is going to look like for maybe a decade is going to get decided really quickly here.
The Capitals will very, very soon be without Alex Ovechkin. Nicklas Backstrom seems gone already. T.J. Oshie seems gone thanks to injury and the cap situation. The team has already moved on from Evgeny Kuznetsov. John Carlson isn't old by any means, but he will be 35 next January.
The time of the same old underachieving, and at the same time Cup winning, core is basically over. This is a new team now. It's an exciting one as well.
If you're a casual fan and you have made it through all of this mumbo jumbo, time wasting nonsense, one, I appreciate it, two, now is the time to start following this Capitals team once again.
It really does feel like this season is the start of something. What is that something? Well, that's for the 82 game season to tell us. Is it the complete end of a competitive Capitals team before a rebuild of sort starts? Or is this the start of another decade plus of really good, Stanley Cup contending Caps teams thanks to all the new pieces and young guys coming up?
If you need a reason to start watching the Washington Capitals, or maybe get back into the team after being away for a while, I cannot think of a better, more interesting time to get into the team.