With a few tweaks over the summer months, the Washington Capitals went from a pretender to contender, quickly overhauling a third of the roster to go from the second Wild Card spot to the top of the Eastern Conference.
Now, they've become the example for other teams to follow going into the summer.
Per The Athletic's Pierre LeBrun, there are expected to be fewer sellers this offseason, with numerous teams looking to improve. The way they want to do that is by following in the Capitals' footsteps.
"Instead, it seems teams that need to get younger are looking at the fantastic re-tool the Washington Capitals pulled off over the past few years and deciding that’s the model they want to follow," LeBrun wrote.
President of hockey operations Brian MacLellan, along with general manager Chris Patrick, made a handful of trades, acquiring Pierre-Luc Dubois, Jakob Chychrun, Andrew Mangiapane, Logan Thompson and offloading Darcy Kuemper and Nick Jensen before signing Brandon Duhaime, Taylor Raddysh and Matt Roy.
The change in personnel, along with breakout seasons for young players in Aliaksei Protas and Connor McMichael, Alex Ovechkin's "GR8 Chase" and coach Spencer Carbery's leadership, single-handedly turned Washington back into a top team in the NHL.
When it comes to what the Capitals have in store for this summer, the team is expecting a quieter time than last year, but said that they will look to address areas of concern, including finding a solution at third-line center and perhaps bringing in another skilled winger.
All the while, the Capitals want to continue to get younger.
"I think we're willing to be aggressive, but I think our goal, as within the last two years, is to get younger. We're transitioning from a mature, older team into a younger team and it continues to be that goal going forward for us," MacLellan said. "We're going to inject a bunch of prospects into Hershey next year that we're pretty excited about. Not sure where they are in their development path. But over the next two years we're going to be adding young guys, and hopefully we can complement it with a good transaction or two in free agency or the trade market."
