Capital mistake

Something's rotten in Washington! It's been discussed quite a while, but let's go on this topic too. The Washington Capitals have obviously failed big time to respond to the expectations this season. The media has quickly thrown Alex Ovechkin under the bus for not pulling the team to the level it belongs to. That's the easy way for laying the blame and to me it just seems a bit too light for a proper analysis. I'll throw in some thoughts of my own and hope to shed some more light on the matter.

The Capitals have been phenomenal the last few seasons. Taking home the Presidents' Trophy and three consecutive SE Division crowns. Ovechkin has been on top of the league in scoring, backed up by amazing numbers racked up by Mike Green on defence. However, the team has disappeared in the postseason every time and been criticized heavily on that.

Then, this season where everything seems to go wrong. Great start, but then just failures upon failures. Everyone is pointing fingers, but no one really takes the responsibility of changing the course. Horrible decisions have followed.

Bruce Boudreau got fired and replaced by Dale Hunter. That's replacing a coach with NHL-best record over last 3 seasons with a former NHL grinder with practically no experience on NHL level coaching. Just for a bad stretch in play. Well, now everyone can see that Hunter doesn't bring anything on the table for the Capitals and should not carry over for next season, no matter how this ends.

The Capitals' offense is based on three key players, Ovechkin, Semin and Bäckström. All of these guys are extremely skilled, but at the same time very much confidence-driven. On a bad streak, it seems, none of these guys will be the one to step up and carry the team. In general, these guys don't really have the flexibility to "go back to basics and grind it out". They're flashy, entertaining and lethally effective when the whole line plays on that level. If the line resorts to plain old basics, these guys will end up shaking their heads on the offensive blue line and waving their arms in frustration. Bench the millionaires and see who do you have to throw out there to play the 0-0 games.

Take another look and try to find out the guys who can score behind the big three. Laich, Chimera, Johansson, Brouwer? These are not exactly top of the league when compared to some other teams' secondary scoring. That's the biggest reason this team struggles mightily when the big guns are not blazing. It's easy to forget, but if one looks a bit back in history, the Capitals won a lot of 7-4, 6-5 games with the ultimate firepower. That doesn't promise much for the moment your gunpowder gets wet. And wet it has been this season. Especially after Rene Bourque cowardly clipped Niklas Bäckström out of the games.

So, the expectations for this team may be a bit too high and not based on their material, but rather on their regular season success of late. Washington is surprisingly fragile team. They lost one key piece in Mike Green early this season and haven't been able to recover for a balanced, entertaining style they require to be successful.

Washington's defense and goaltending have been mediocre at best through the great seasons but now they really show their vulnerability after losing the dominating puck possession up front. Tomas Vokoun has been on top of NHL for a long time, but seems to have lost the race against time. The young goalies in the lineup are as shaky as they come.

So, no wonder they're struggling to make it to the playoffs. And even if they do, it's easy to predict a first round exit against a top seed of Rangers, Boston or Pittsburgh for example. Simply no chance.

Let's turn our sights for the future and try to figure out what to do to change things around. Here's a short to-do list.

1) Fire Hunter and get a real coach, who understands that you need to adjust the team style according to the players and not vice versa. You can actually have different game plans for different lines, based on the strengths of the players on ice.

2) Trade Alexander Semin. He's a number one player-slash-diva for a team and will not rise to full potential in Ovechkin's shadow. Ovie is signed for life, so easy call here. In return the team will get almost the whole second line or top defensive pair.

3) Keep the faith on the superstars. Don't publicly scold the franchise player(s). Ovechkin is a natural force when mad, but quite the opposite when mad at the coach or ownership. There's a fine line to balance on but you just don't want to restrain this guy in any way. Just get over the envy for the alpha male and let Ovie run free and others will follow. Good things come, rock star style will prevail. And for ownership, don't sign the top players for 100M+ USD contracts if you don't plan to build and brand the team around them.

Start with that and see the light. Go Caps!