2008-2009 Caps Season Wrap-Up, Part I

Ok folks, we've put the guitar controller down for now and are now turning our attention to reviewing and wrapping up the 2008-2009 Washington Capitals season. And as we picked through the debris of a season brought to a crashing halt and put back together the wreckage of a season ended too soon for many, we've come to a few conclusions;

#1. Things are not as bad as they seem. Folks, we never drank the Kool-Aid that the Caps were Stanley Cup contenders this season. We knew that the Caps were not going to win the Cup so that meant that the Caps would likely lose in the playoffs. We really wish it hadn't been to the Penguin Scum but somebody had to end our season. Last year we felt that this would be the season that the Caps broke through and made the playoffs. The Caps surprised everybody and crashed the NHL Post-Season last year and while they only lasted one round, they were expected to do better this season and they did. They posted seven more victories in the regular season for 14 more points in the standings. The Caps wrapped up a playoff spot and the division title early and held the #2 seed in the East, #4 overall. The Caps also got into the Second round for the first time since 1998. That is nothing to sneeze at while they also lit the town on fire hungry for a winner.

But that's not all folks because:

#2. Better days are ahead. The players who are easily defined as "the core"; A.O., Nicklas Backstrom, Alexander "Slappy" Semin, and Mike "BEAM ME UP" Green are 23, 21, 25, and 23 respectively. That means they can and should get even better than they are right now. If you happen to be in Darwin's Waiting Room for some reason, ignore the bozos who claim that their primes are being wasted. These guys haven't entered their primes yet which is what makes this so scary. Furthermore, when you look at the list of injuries, you should realize just how good this team really is and like us, can only imagine what this team could have done at full strength. Because with a hurt Green and A.O. the entire time, they came back from a 3-1 deficit to win in the first round and took the Penguin Scum to the distance before finally running completely out of gas.

However:

#3. There is still a lot of work to be done. We don't envy the job of General Manager George McPhee in not only trying to keep this team together, but to also find upgrades and improvements with little room under the salary cap and not much more room coming this season and the very real possibility of even less room in 2010-2011. We should also note that the Caps have not yet acquired the hard-hitting stay-at-home defenseman that they've needed since trading Brendan Witt. Furthermore, the scoring right winger to play alongside A.O. is still missing as well. John Carlson may be the defenseman we've been looking for but he isn't expected to be here full time until 2010-2011. Who the right winger will be is anybodies guess and would be our focus with the 24th pick in the upcoming draft. Finally, while the core is young, they also need maturity. That will come with time but until these players are no longer concerned with how they will celebrate their goals or what their hairstyles are going to be, they will lack the maturity that they need in order to be successful. We're not saying that these guys can't have fun. We want them to have fun, but we want them to focus on the game more than style points.

So folks, over the next few days we'll go through the lineup and assign some grades. Some guys will get different grades for the regular season and playoffs while some will get only one grade. We'll let you know which is which.

Open Up the Back Door

No, we're not talking about Canadian Diving Team Captain, Low blow Secondary Assist Cindy Crosby's favorite fighting style...

We're talking about the Caps gaining a playoff spot. Sparked by a four goal third period that gave the Buffaslugs a 5-3 win over Florida in Loserville...er...Buffalo, the Washington Capitals have now qualified for a spot in the 2009 Stanley Cup Playoffs. Even though the Caps and the Panthers can finish the season with the exact same point total; the Caps have the first real tie breaker over the Panthers which is total wins as the Panthers cannot win more than 43 games. The Caps have already won 45 games so advantage and playoff spot to the Washington Capitals.

The Carolina Hurricanes tied a franchise record with their ninth straight win at home tonight over the Ottawa Senators. So the magic number for a Division Title remains at five points as should the Caps and Canes be tied at the end of the regular season, the Caps and Canes currently would most likely have identical records (both have 7 losses after regulation) however the Canes won the season series from the Caps (7 points to 6) and therefore have the tiebreaker over the Caps; necessitating the extra point for Washington. Carolina does not play again until Saturday night when they visit New Jersey who are playing in Chicago on Friday night.

So now, we begin the watch on who the Caps will face in the first round, "if the playoff started today," that would be the Penguin Scum. However, they are currently leading Calgary 2-0 late in the third period and have a game in hand on the Hurricanes who are only one point ahead of the Penguin Scum. The Rangers are a strong possibility as they have two games in hand and trail the Hurricanes by three points.

The Best Trades Are Often the Ones You Don't Make

We have to admit, we're glad things were slow around the office today so we could watch the trades come in and Darwin's Waiting Room go into total meltdown mode over the Caps not making any trades today. This of course means that once again Ted Leonsis is a fraud and General Manager George McPhee is incompetent as they sat around on their hands all day while such luminaries as Steve Eminger and Olaf Kolzig were traded and the Caps didn't get in on this action.

But while we think that this team could have used a trade to shake some things up in the locker room and provide some new blood happy to be here; sometimes, making a trade just to make a trade is a very bad idea.

So let's take a look a trade the Caps were probably in on from the start, the Bill Guerin trade. Tarik's protestations aside, there is good reason to believe he was coming here for a pick and prospect. The Caps quickly recalled Jay Beagle without explanation on Saturday night and have been willing to deal draft picks in the past, see last year's trade for Cristobal Huet. However, Guerin did not come to Washington on Sunday or today, he ended up going to Pittsburgh for a third round draft pick.

This ends up being a win because the Caps because, the Islander's price for Guerin dropped. So by not making the deal the Caps keep their draft pick and whatever prospect the Islanders had in mind (we wonder if it really was Beagle). Furthermore, while Guerin would have provided more leadership, more "grit," and could have been very happy going from a last place team to a first place team, Bill Guerin is still 37 and may not have been able to keep up with the rest of the team. In other words, he's slow. Also keep in mind that as Corey Masisak reported the Caps have the maximum number of contracts allowed under the CBA. The Caps would have to get rid of a contract in order to bring another one on so making a single trade of a player for a pick was impossible. Finally, Guerin would be a complete and total rental, he's a UFA after this season. $4.5 million to come back may be too much to give him and Sergei (#3) Fedorov but retirement is just as likely. We're not too terribly upset that we missed out on this deal.

Another player who could have helped was Derek Morris of the Phoenix Coyoes. Phoenix ended up trading him to the New York Rangers for Dmitri Kalinin, Nigel Dawes, and Petr Prucha. While any hard hitting stay at home defenseman faster and quicker than John "Coach's Pet" Erskine Bowles would be a welcome addition, there aren't that many of them available in the first place. That's why Morris, who is already 30 years old and a UFA after the season, yielded so much in return for the Coyotes. Kalinin is 28, Dawes 24, and Prucha 26. While Prucha has been injury prone since his rookie season, Kalinin and Dawes have decent upsides, Dawes especially. And should Prucha get and stay healthy, you have a former 30 goal scorer on your roster.

Speak for yourself be we wouldn't have been happy if McPhee had traded some combination of Jeff "Sergeant" Schultz, Shaone Morrrissonnn, Tomas Fleischmann, and Eric Fehr for just Derek Morris. Yes it would have upgraded our blueline, but the cost to the rest of the team would have more than offset the addition and made the trade not worth it.

However, the real cause for McPhee sitting out today's activities was Michael "Meadowlark" Nylander's contract. The Caps owe him $8.5 million over two seasos after this one ends. His cap figure is locked in at $4.875 million and to make matters worse, he has a no movement clause which is why we haven't been able to move him all season. The Caps can't even place Nylander on waivers without his permission. (Think he'd agree to that???) We can't begrudge Nylander for exercising his contract rights nor do we blame McPhee for giving him those rights two years ago. Nobody could have foreseen that Nylander would bomb the way he has.

So what are the Caps left to do with this lemon of a contract? Do the Caps continue keep him as healthy scratch or do they let him play down the stretch and in the playoffs? He works pretty well with Fleischmann and Fehr. Viktor Kozlov disappears when the playoffs start and Nicklas Backstrom still struggles in tight checking games so an experienced top line center is still needed on this team.

Should the Caps buy him out after the season? Well, that would cost the Caps about $5.67 million this June. It would also put him on their cap for the next four season at about $3.4579 million next year, $3.2921 million the year after that, and $1.42 million in the each of the last two years. If they were to retain him for depth purposes as noted above for another year and then buy him out in 2010; the cap hit would drop to $2.875 million in 2010-2011 and $1 in 2011-2012, saving over $1 on the cap in 2012-2013. We could see the Caps going either way on this though we would lean towards keeping him around for another year for depth purposes provided he does not become a locker room cancer. Of course if McPhee can swing a deal, by all means do it.

But getting back to the trading deadline this year, we ask what did Detroit do last year? They won the Cup and only got Brad Stuart at the deadline from Los Angeles for a 2nd round pick in 2008 and a 4th rounders in 2009. Major trades at the deadline aren't needed to win the Cup when you have enough talent to begin with. The most active teams today are the ones that found themselves lacking something. That can be interpreted as a bad sign.

Again, while we're disappointed that there weren't any deals done today, the Caps were right to think long term. Yes, we need help on the blueline and could use a little more "grit" up front. A veteran to sit behind Jose "Alvin, Simon," Theodore wouldn't have been a bad idea either. But any of that had to come at the right price. As the Guerin trade showed, the price was clearly higher for Caps because of their place in the standings and the overall organizational depth.

Furthermore, and please hear us out on this one, maybe we don’t want to win a Cup this year anyway. That's right, it may not be the best idea in the world to go all in after a Stanley Cup this season. We're still a young team and there are players on rookie deals and others heading into arbitration eligibility who would expect big raises with Cup rings already on their fingers. With the current economic conditions, future cap space is too much in doubt to set yourself up for hefty raises to a lot of players.

We also happen to think and want to believe that the goal of the franchise is not to just win one Cup. The whole idea is to win 3-4 Cups over 6-7 year span. There's plenty of time for guys like A.O., Alexander "Slappy" Semin, and Mike "BEAM ME UP" Green to drink from Lord Stanley's Chalice. There's no need to rush things. Look at what Pitt did last year at the trading deadline trying to rush things and what it has meant for this season and beyond. Do you really want that for the Caps? We sure don't.

Yeah, We've Been Slacking...

Look folks, as we've said before, we have a 45 hour work week to begin with, so if you were expecting Post-Mortems after West Coast games, think again. Secondly, the past two home games have ended in gimmicks and quite frankly, sapped any desire we had to do a Post-Mortem.


This doesn't in any way shape or form however mean we haven't been paying attention...

• When the Caps took only 3 shots on goal during their 9 minute Power Play in Calgary and didn't score a single goal, the game was over and the Caps were going to lose.
• The never ending string of 5-on-3's didn't help matters either....
• We fell asleep during the Phoenix game but what we did see wasn't all that encouraging.
• We missed out on Dallas because after getting soaked watching Maryland-N.C. State, we were hoping for Ohio State to take care of State Penn.
• After watching the Nashville game, we wouldn't be at all surprised by another extended losing streak in the month of November. The Caps face the Buffaslugs this Saturday, have the Canes and Rangers at home followed by Olie Kolzig's return. The Caps then visit Carolina before playing a home and home with New Jersey and then head out west again. The only game before Atlanta that looks easily winnable right now is Ottawa next Tuesday. L.A. should be a win but is comes one night after the Caps play in Anaheim. Are we saying the Caps are going to lose all these games? No, but they won't be easy either and some serious work needs to be done in order to win those games.
• While Jose "Alvin, Simon," Theodore is still adjusting to the team in front of him, he's also taking a little too long to get "warmed up" in games. The blueline also has some really off nights which doesn't help Theodore either.
• We could have sworn we read just last year about how the coach wanted somebody to get in front of the net like Tomas Holmstrom on the Power Play.
• While it is only one month and nine games into the season, how funny would it be if Alexander Semin beats Evegni Malkin-Lindros out for the same awards A.O. took home last year?
• And speaking of A.O., we've all heard in some fashion about the revolving door that is his love life right now. He is currently making $9 million a season right now so why isn't a Russian mail order bride a possibility??? (Why did we start thinking about this? Click here to see why)

And finally, add us to the chorus of folks who said "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot" to the undeserved two year extension to John "Coach's Pet" Erskine Bowles. We've given serious thoughts to restarting the George McPhee Watch again because of this monstrosity. We don't think Erskine Bowles is worth $1.25 lettalone $1,250,000.00 a season especially when you have highly touted prospects in Hershey you're dying to get into the NHL but can't because of cap restraints.

First of all, let us state that this 2 year $2.5 million contract only makes some sense if and ONLY IF Brian Pothier never returns from his concussion. But even then, it wastes a roster spot on a player that two years ago was available the day before training camp started. He hasn't gotten any better as he still makes the same stupid plays and doesn't have the footspeed to recover from his misadventures. Secondly, if you were expecting/wanting to see Karl Alzner this season, forgetaboutit; you're not going to pay a guy $1.25 million to patrol the press box which was Erskine Bowles excels in outside of getting burned in the neutral zone. Furthermore, a little known clause in the CBA dictates that extensions signed during the season can only allocate $$$$$ that is currently available under the cap combined with the $$$$$ that will become available on July 1st when expiring contracts expire. What this means is that of the roughly $13 million in contracts we have expiring after this season, $2.5 million of it has already been "tagged" (using the CBA term) for Erskine Bowles and cannot be used to provided extensions for Sergei (#3) Fedorov, Eric Fehr, Boyd Gordon, Shaone Morrrissonnn, Milan Jurcina, Jeff "Sargent" Schultz, and Brent Johnson. Not exactly a collection of key players but 2010's FA's could very well need the extra $.713 million that Erskine Bowles is getting and wouldn't it be nice to lock Federov up for next season before July? Also, considering that we need a true Power Play quarterback on the blueline, this contract makes that much harder to find and afford. Finally, Tyler Sloan showed he could take up space about as well as Erskine Bowles does, is a year younger and makes less than Erskine Bowles did even before the extension.

Simply put, this is a contract that is going to come back to haunt us.

Your 2008-2009 Washington Capitals Preview

Reasonable people may differ, but it is pretty safe to say that this is the most highly anticipated season of Washington Capitals Hockey in the history of the franchise. The expectations are as high as they were when the 2001-2002 season started and the Caps were introducing Jaromir Jagr into their lineup. But please forgive us if we see some disturbing parallels to the 1998-1999 Washington Capitals.

The 1997-1998 Washington Capitals surprisingly ended up in the Stanley Cup Finals, a place where nobody had expected them to be, after missing the playoffs in the previous season. The town had fallen in love with the team again and despite the disappointing finish, there was a universal belief that the team had finally arrived. A few cosmetic changes were made to the lineup with most of the playoff rentals being allowed to walk away and the season quickly turned into a disaster. The promise of the previous Spring didn't carry over, the team traded away fan favorites, and even Dishonest Abe got out as he sold the team to Ted Leonsis.

While the 2008-2009 Washington Capitals are significantly younger than the 1998-1999 team, there are things people need to remember. While the Caps improbably made the playoffs after getting off to a dreadfully slow start that cost Glen Hanlon his job, the Caps still needed a 7 game winning streak at the end of the season just to make it into the playoffs. The Caps beat 5 teams in that streak that missed the playoffs. One of those wins was in a gimmick, another was in OT to the worst team in the NHL last year, and another required an improbable third period comeback on the road. Yes, the Caps woke up in time to force a Game 7 but still didn't have enough to get the job done when it counted most.

Even more troubling to us is that the needs of this franchise have not been addressed. We give credit to General Manager George McPhee for keeping together a young and exciting team under the constraints of a salary cap. But who is the stay-at-home, shutdown defenseman that will cause opposing teams to worry about venturing into our zone? Who is the right side scoring compliment to A.O. and Alexander Semin? The Caps are hoping that a healthy Captain Chris Clark and Eric Fehr can get the job done up front but even when Clark was healthy, the Caps were looking for a scorer opposite of A.O. and Fehr has yet to prove himself at the NHL level. There are no new answers at least on the backline and the constant attempts to make a silk purse out of the sows ear that is John "Coach's Pet" Erskine Bowles continues to frustrate us.

The bad news does not stop there, vital cogs Mike "BEAM ME UP" Green and Semin start new lucrative contracts this season. Will they have the same motivation that they did a year ago? Jose "Alvin, Simon," Theodore takes over in net, but how long will his adjustment period be? Better yet, will he provide at least average goaltending? What will the sophomore slump of Nicklas Backstrom look like?

There are some reasons for optimism of course. A.O. of course is the reigning MVP and scoring champion. Michael Nylander is healthy and Sergei Fedorov provides the kind of leadership and depth that a young team like the Caps desperately need.

The biggest challenge however for the Caps are the high expectations and the pressure they will bring. Now generally considered one of the top teams in the Eastern Conference, gone are the nights when teams will take the Caps for granted. If Caps get off to another slow start, will they disintegrate like they did last season?

The one thing we will learn about the Caps this season is whether or not Bruce Boudreau can live up to his coach of the year title. Opposing teams have had a full summer to look at almost a full season's worth of tape on him and his systems. Will Boudreau be able to adjust to other team's attempts to stop him or are the Caps talented enough that it doesn't matter what other teams do, the Caps will run their systems to success?

For the Caps to be successful, the Power Play MUST improve over last seasons inconsistent squad. The Penalty Killing was ok but improvement there is not nearly as important on the Power Play. Eric Fehr and Tomas Fleischmann need to show that they belong at the NHL level. Jeff Schultz and Milan Jurcina need to have Mike Green like breakout years and Erskine Bowles needs to stay in the press box as much as possible. Theodore needs to regain his Vezina and Hart trophy winning form.

Last year we said that the Caps would miss the playoffs and while we were happy to be wrong, we still think that the Caps remain a playoff caliber team. But as we indicated last night, we aren't sold on the Caps becoming one of the NHL's elite teams overnight. The lack of salary cap space will make it hard to make the deadline deals that energized the Caps last season, so what you see now is largely what you'll see come April In other words,the pieces that are missing now, will remain missing all season, especially the piece on the blueline. At the very least, it should be fun and very well could end up breaking every body's hearts again in the Spring.