The worst time of the year is almost over. The hockey off-season is just about gone. In about one weeks time there will be NHL action going on. Rookie camps will be getting underway and most teams will play in some kind of rookie tournament. Actual games will be played.
Thirty of the NHL's thirty-two teams will play in rookie tournaments. Unfortunately, the Washington Capitals are one of two teams that will not participate in this. However they will still have a rookie camp from the 13th to the 16th, so there will still be things to keep an eye on.
Not long after that we have training camp starting. Then the pre-season gets going. Before you know it it will be early October and we will be playing regular season hockey once again. If you're reading this I assume you are much like me and are a little overly excited.
At the same time I hope there are a lot of people who are not like me who are reading this today. I hope there are a lot of non Capitals fans reading this. Or maybe casual Capitals fans. Fans who might catch a game here and there, but don't watch that much.
Why do I hope this? I think this is a pretty exciting time for the Washington Capitals. If you're a casual hockey fan somewhere and don't know what team to follow, or if your a casual hockey fan in the D.C. area, or even a fan that has left the Caps in recent years, I think now, this coming season is a really good opportunity to get invested in this team.
Jump on the bandwagon as they say. There are plenty of reasons to do so this season. I will likely not hit all of the reasons here today, but we will go over a few of those reasons right now.
Ovechkin
We just have to face facts. Alex Ovechkin isn't going to be around forever. If we are to believe the rumors, it sounds like we could be down to the last two seasons with "The Great Eight" in the NHL and Washington. If those rumors are correct, we could be down to, at most, our last 164 games with one of the best to ever play the game of ice hockey.
If you haven't jumped on the Capitals bandwagon, now would be the time to do it.
If you're reading this, you likely have already been watching Ovechkin for a while, if not for his entire career up to this point. If that's the case, consider this a call to action. Go tell your friends who might not be hockey fans, go gather people who have been casual Capitals fans and get them to watch more hockey.
If you are any kind of sports fans you have to watch the greatest play. We can be saying the same thing in basketball right now. LeBron James also doesn't have too many more years. Go watch some basketball. He's one of the best ever. Don't miss the opportunity to see one of the greatest to ever do something do that something.
If you're a sports fan in the D.C. area or anywhere else, time is running out. Don't miss the chance to see Alex Ovechkin. One of the greatest ice hockey players this planet has ever seen or will ever see.
The Chase
We might as well keep talking about Ovechkin. After all this is a franchise that has centered around this guy for twenty years now. Why not talk about him as much as we can.
And oh yeah, he is kind of on the verge of doing just a little something special. Like breaking a record that a lot of people thought might be unbreakable.
Ovechkin is 41 goals away from tying Wayne Gretzky. Any time you hear the sentence "tying Wayne Gretzky" you should start to pay attention. Ovechkin is going into this new season with 853 career goals. He needs 894 to tie and 895 sets the new record.
We know 41 goals is not that many goals for Ovechkin. Would anyone be shocked if he scored 41 goals this coming season? Probably not. Now, should you expect a guy who is turning 39 years old before the season starts to score forty plus goals in a season? Again, probably not. But if there is a guy to do it, why not him?
If you haven't been paying close attention to the Capitals, do you need a better reason to start watching than a player who is a legend of your team chase down a record? Not only is he chasing down a record, he might then go on to set a new record that could take a long, long, long time to catch. And you can say you saw it. You can say, "I watched that guy. I watched that moment."
There will probably be a lot of people who lie and say they saw the moment even when they didn't. One, don't be that person. Two, just watch.
I can speak from some experience here. Yes, this will be slightly controversial to some, but the topic is basically the same. As a kid in northern California I was not a baseball fan. Barry Bonds starts to break records, starts to chase the home run record, I start watching the Giants, now I have been a fan of the team for almost twenty years. Legit record? Steroids in baseball? Go argue that somewhere else. I'm just saying a record could fall and watching that could change your life in a way.
If you need a reason to start watching the Capitals more, I'm not sure I can think of a better reason than this.
New Faces
This has been a very exciting off-season for the Caps. After sputtering for a couple of seasons, one season having missed the playoffs completely, the other barely getting in then getting swept out of the postseason, the Caps have loaded up a bit.
Washington made one of, if not the biggest splash of the off-season. Early in the summer they traded for Pierre-Luc Dubios from the Los Angeles Kings for Darcy Kuemper.
Kuemper had issues in D.C. In two seasons wearing the Caps red, white and blue he did not play up to his potential and contract. Him not playing the best allowed his starting goaltender spot to be taken by Charlie Lindgren and he then became a "problem" for the Caps.
How often do you trade a somewhat expensive "problem", my apologies to Kuemper for continuing to call him that, for a potential key player? Not too often. Usually it's a key player for key player kind of deal. Two key players that need a change of scenery. Or one key player asks for a trade and another one gets caught up in the shockwave of that.
The Capitals got a potential top six center, who is 26 years old, who is already on a long term contract. And all they had to give up is an underperforming, on the expensive side, 34 year old goalie.
I can't even begin to describe how big a robbery this trade could be.
The Caps also made another really big splash in trading for defenseman Jakob Chychrun. This isn't a steal like the Dubois trade could be. The Capitals had to give up Nick Jensen to get Chychrun. Jensen was good for the Caps. But lets be real, the Caps won this trade on paper. Jensen will be 34 in a couple of weeks Chychrun won't turn 27 until the very end of next season. And to be blunt, Chychrun is just the better player.
This isn't as big a steal to me because Chychrun has just one year left on his deal before his hits unrestricted free agency. Hopefully everything goes well and the Caps are able to avoid him going to free agency. But this could be a one year thing.
Washington also landed one of the bigger prizes on defense in free agency signing Matt Roy to a six year deal. The 29 year old won't blow you away with numbers. He averages somewhere around 6 goals a season, his career high being 9 a couple of seasons ago. He also will get you in the twenties in total points. But he's a top four defenseman. And he's a new face to keep an eye on this season.
Someone that I'm keeping my eye on and excited to see how he plays in Washington is Andrew Mangiapane. The Capitals acquired him for just a second round pick in 2025. He's a bit of a reclamation project. But if it works the Capitals could add a spark to their offense on the very cheap side of things. A couple of seasons ago he scored 35 goals with the Calgary Flames. Can he come close to repeating that? If not, he has basically hovered around 15-18 goals a season. That's still not too bad. He brings the effort every night. He should be a fun player to watch. Hopefully he can recapture some of the magic he had a few season ago.
It's a new Capitals team. Keeping track of these new guys should be fun. If you're a casual fan, hop on the bandwagon now. It feels like a new start in Washington. Now is a great time to get invested in this team.
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.
