Through the years of 2010-17 the Washington Capitals were known as "underachievers" or maybe to some, just flat out chokers. In those years the Caps had a lot of very good or great teams. In those years they won Presidents' Trophy three times. They didn't make it past the second round once. One of those times was a first round exit.
But I was and still am a pretty big defender of those Capitals teams. It's not like the Capitals lost to obviously inferior teams in those years. 2010 aside. In those other six or so years Washington lost to good New York Rangers teams that always needed to be dealt with. They lost to a really good Lightning team one year. They lost to a Penguins team who won back to back Stanley Cups.
To me, it's hard to underachieve when you go against the very top teams the league has to offer during a span of time. That's what the Caps did from 2011-17.
Since the Caps have won the Stanley Cup in 2018 though I think the team has underachieved. Without going into too much detail they should have beaten the Hurricanes in 2019, but simply got outworked for the majority of that series. The 2019 being one of my least favorite teams I've seen, almost acting "too cool for school" at times that season. To me, it felt like they rested on their Cup win that season.
In 2020 they acted like they didn't want anything to do with the bubble playoffs. Quickly getting shoved aside by the Islanders. In 2021 they didn't put up a very good fight vs the Bruins. In 2022 they could have beaten a Presidents Trophy wining Panthers team. Florida that year did everything they could to throw that series away and the Caps couldn't cash in on that chance. Florida would get swept the next round to show how not great they were in fact playing.
That's the end of that era. The Capitals missed the playoffs in 2023 and we jump into the era we're in now. "The new Capitals" or something like that. A new team with new players like Pierre-Luc Dubois and Jakob Chychrun. Young up and coming players like Connor McMichael and Aliaksei Protas. Ovechkin is on the back nine, or back two or three of his career. Backstrom is gone, Oshie is gone. Holtby is long gone. It's a different team, it's a different era.
But is it the same old underachieving Capitals from 2019-22? Or longer if you ask other fans.
First off, you kind of have to ask yourself, what is a successful season anyways?
You have some, what I call simple minded people out there. "The only thing that is successful is a championship" and that weird mindset. I don't think life is that black and white and kind of feel bad for people who do think it is. In sports every team, every situation is unique. The absolute best team doesn't need to win a title to have a successful year. The absolute worst can be terrible and still have a successful season.
Some examples. The Edmonton Oilers this season feels like a Cup or failure season. The Stars don't have the same feel. They feel like a Cup Final or failure. The Leafs felt like a final four or failure. The Panthers? Well, they are the back to back conference champions and defending Cup champions. Anything past round one is kind of impressive at this point. At some point you run out of juice, like the Lightning from 2020-23.
Every team has a little bit different level that they can reach to have their season be deemed a success. At least if you ask me.
So was the Capitals season a success?
Well, when you look at where they were last season, or the last two seasons it's hard to not say the season was a success. One of the last two seasons they completely missed the playoffs. The other they snuck into the postseason thanks to the bottom of the eastern conference being incredibly weak. They then got swept by a Rangers team in the first round.
This season it was a Capitals team the was fighting for the Presidents' Trophy and ended up winning the top seed in the eastern conference.
You also had the Ovechkin goal scoring chase. That was obviously a huge success. Even if it isn't the kind of success we're talking about today, it still is worth mentioning when talking about the 2024-25 Washington Capitals.
It was a Caps team that was in first place basically all season long. Usually those kinds of teams are expected to go on long playoffs runs. Yet here we are. We are watching the conference finals after the Caps got bounced in 5 games in the second round after a less than impressive showing vs Carolina. To put it bluntly, the Hurricanes simply outclassed the Capitals in that second round matchup.
Now the Hurricanes are getting their back sides handed to them by the Panthers in the conference finals which also makes me wonder, how close were the Capitals really? A question we'll never really get an answer to since we'll never see how Washington would have performed vs a Panthers team at this point of the playoffs.
But I keep coming back to this question. Was it a successful season? The regular season was fantastic. Mostly.
It was an inredible start to the season. That going all the way well past the first half of the season. Fifty-five games into the season the Caps were 36-11-8, good for 80 points, one point back of Winnipeg for best in the league. After that, maybe that's when things started to go a little sideways.
When the NHL resumed after the 4 Nations Faceoff break, the Caps were kind of average. Washington played 27 games from February 20th the the end of the season. In those 27 games they were just 15-11-1. That gave them 31 points, that meant they were 13th in the league from 4 Nations on.
So was this a team that ran out of steam? Were they just riding a giant wave of momentum in the early part of the year? Did they get too caught up in the Ovechkin goal scoring chase? A legit question. After 4 Nations it just didn't really look like the same team from early in the season.
I thought that was nothing unusual. It was a team that was coasting. They had essentially locked up a playoff spot long ago. They locked up the top spot in the east. It's not uncommon to see a top team stumble into the playoffs.
Then the playoffs happened. To me, they just never looked that great. Yes, they beat the Montreal Canadiens in 5 games. But they were playing, just fine, I guess. Montreal looked like the better team for a lot of the first 3+ games. Tom Wilson throws a big hit in Game 4. That seemed to wake the Caps up and they finish off the Habs after that.
Then we all know what happened vs the Hurricanes.
It feels like a big disappointment to me. I think that is for one reason, that reason being the eye test. This Capitals team looked like it had everything.
It felt like this team could play any kind of way. You need a high scoring slugfest? They could win those games. You need a defensive shut down game? No problem, win. Maybe the team just didn't have it on a certain night, don't worry, the goaltending is very good, win. It was a big team, a heavy team, physical team, they could skate well. All year I was trying to find a critical weakness and I just didn't see it.
The playoffs probably showed up some weaknesses. Maybe the depth wasn't as good as we or I thought. Martin Fehervary gets injured before the playoffs. Maybe the defensive depth was very tested after that. The third line was almost irrelevant throughout the run. Once you faced a serious team like Carolina, Ovechkin looked like he did vs New York a year ago, just not quite quick enough.
The playoffs definitely showed the weaknesses. It's just the way they went out that puts a sour taste in my mouth.
A competitive exit, a tighter six or seven game series where the Caps just didn't quite have enough, that would have settled better with me. Instead it was a stumble through Montreal, then Carolina patted you on the head and showed you the way out after that. That stung me. Because the Caps were one of the best teams, I thought.
That's why I think this was a season where the Capitals very much underachieved. I know you're going to have the glass half full people, or just the flat out homer Capitals media people say how great the season was. I don't know how you can act like one of the best teams, nearly all season long then get kicked out of the playoffs the way they did and say it was a successful season.
It was obviously a successful regular season. It was a very entertaining regular season. If you want to say that then you would be 100% correct. But this was a great team. And they simply got outclassed vs a Hurricanes team. It was a Capitals team that didn't look close to how good Carolina was. And now the Canes are showing how not close they are to the Panthers.
Again, I don't have that dumb championship or bust mentality. A successful season can mean almost anything. I think this was a disappointing season. A competitive second round exit, or a conference final should have been the goal for a successful year and it didn't happen. And it frankly wasn't close.
Some will point out how bright the future is as a reason why this season was a success. That brightness can go away quickly. You can't keep banking on 40 goal seasons from Ovechkin. Dubois had a career year. Can he continue that? Everywhere he's been he fades later on in his stint. Can the young guys continue their upward trajectory? Will any of the prospects hit? None of that is guaranteed. What happens if Logan Thompson has an average season like he did in the second half of this season and in the playoffs? What happens when the great leadership moves on from this franchise?
I saw that in San Jose. The Sharks had a lot of very good players. They lose the leadership group and those players and that team fell apart. How much longer does Ovechkin and Carlson have? Sure, you have Tom Wilson, assumed future captain. The Sharks had Logan Couture. It all looked fine in SJ. Until it didn't
I know people like to try to make themselves feel better after a season and exit like this. But nothing is a sure thing. I'm not a fortune teller, maybe everything ends terrifically for Washington in the coming years.
All I'm saying is this season was a good chance to make a run, and they didn't. They didn't come very close at all. It's a big disappointment to me.
