We are all entitled to our opinions. No matter how weird or, maybe just flat out wrong we may think those thoughts are. It's a big world. There are a lot of people on this planet. There are a lot of different ways to think.
When it comes to sports and trying to guess or predict how things will go it is just that. It's just a guess. Nobody knows what is going to happen no matter how much you know.
Look at the Edmonton Oilers last season. Everyone thought they were a Stanley Cup Contender before the season. They were awful to start the year. People jump off the bandwagon. They say they are in big trouble. Fast forward about seven months later and they are in the Stanley Cup Final.
In this case, the predictors were correct. It's the way they got there that no one saw coming.
This year, when talking about the Washington Capitals, seemingly everyone was wrong.
Before I go and say how correct I was, and how smart I was, and how everyone needs to stop and bow to me and my knowledge, I want to point this out.
I thought the Capitals had a chance to be good. I did not think we would be sitting here in late January and the Caps would be the best team in the NHL. I did not think just past the halfway point of the season this team would have a nine point lead on second place in their division WITH games in hand. Three games to be exact. I thought if everything went right this would be a good team and a clear playoff team. Everything has gone right, and I did not see this level of great coming.
Before the season no one else seemed to agree however. Which made me wonder aloud, multiple times, what am I missing here?
Did I miss the Capitals having what I consider the best off-season around? Did I miss the Capitals picking up some very talented players this summer? Am I badly overrating the players they acquired this summer? What kind of idiot trap am I falling into? Where is the giant hole in the earth that I can't seem to see that everyone else is simply walking around? I was truly befuddled on how people were thinking about the Washington Capitals before the season started.
On the 32 thoughts podcast before the season they predicted all teams and said whether they would make the playoffs or not. Both of the hosts on that show said the Capitals would not make the playoffs. The three hosts of the Steve Dangle podcast ranked them in the division. They ranked them 5th, 5th and 4th.
"But literally nobody seems to be picking them for the postseason this time around. I get it because I'm not picking them either." They would then go on to finish their short thought on the team by saying, "You could at least imagine them gliding into another wildcard and making us all look silly." Boy are the Capitals indeed making everyone look silly.
Not that preseason power rankings means anything, but ESPN had the Capitals at twenty. Below teams like the New York Islanders and the Pittsburgh Penguins.
There were legit concerns about this team. Lets not pretend there were not. With all the big acquisitions the team made I think one giant concern was team chemistry. This team acquired at least 4 big time players. Could or would they mesh?
Pierre-Luc Dubois for example had serious questions about him. I tended to think he had something to prove and didn't really have much of an option. He had to be good this season.
Alex Ovechkin was and I think always will be a bit of a question going forward. When will father time finally catch up to this guy. If it was this year how would the team deal with his declining production?
Injuries. Are the younger players going to step up? Are the promising goalies on their team going to stay on the up? Can you rely on them?
There were questions for this team for sure. But every team has questions. The Capitals have answered all of their questions and answered them all with authority.
They've played 46 games at the time of writing this, they're 31-10-5, amazing. It's a team that scores the 2nd most goals per game at 3.57. They allow the third least goals per game at 2.43. They have a top ten power play. They have a top three penalty kill. They're also top ten in Scoring Chance For%, High Danger Attempts% and Expected Goals For%.
Fans will go to the "Everyone hates us!" or "Nobody believes in us!" kind of thought process, which obviously isn't true. Some athletes will even do this. If you've seen the Tom Brady or Patriots documentary on ESPN+, it seemed like every year they said something like "No one thought we could do it!" While the sane person knows, you were the New England Patriots! Everyone knew you could and probably would! What are you talking about? That's just something people do in sports.
I also hate the "Gotcha!" attitude in sports media. Someone will have a hot take and a lot of people in media, or simply on social media will make fun of the person who had that take. That isn't what this is about. As I said earlier, preseason predictions are just a wild guess for the most part.
But this has to be one of the bigger collective misses in recent history. No one picked the Washington Capitals to hardly even make the playoffs. Not only does it look like they will in fact make the playoffs, this looks like a team that could fight for the Presidents' Trophy.
When you watch this team play, they don't seem to have a ton of weaknesses. With that being the case, this could be a really hard team to beat in the playoffs. This could be a Stanley Cup team.
No one, including myself, thought that would be something that needs to be said before the season started.
We still have a long ways to go. We still have almost half the season to play. A lot can happen between now and April and maybe even June for this team. But this has been an absolutely tremendous season for the Washington Capitals so far. For fans, and for someone like me who thought they could be pretty good, it's a little extra sweet. Because basically no one was expecting the Capitals to be very good at all.