This indeed could be a VERRRRRRRY interesting summer.
The Caps need to make a fundamental decision off the top: Are they now into age decline? If they are, what is to be done about it?
At the core of this is Ovie. Ted Leonsis made a pledge to him at the beginning of his career that he would do his best to build and keep a Stanley Cup contending team around him while he was here. Ovie kept up his end of the bargain, production-wise, and Leonsis kept up his end as well. Now one might not like many of the moves the team made to try to keep that promise, but there is no doubt that they made what THEY thought was a good faith attempt to do it (bad decisions, but good intentions).
The team has built a core that has aged, and they've generally gone with experience in bringing in complementary players, which has consistently kept them at or near the salary cap. IF the Caps see the need to get younger, it will almost inevitably come with some regression, because their own prospects are on the whole not that great, you can't trade for good young players without giving up an arm and a leg, plus the really good young players are highly paid also, so you run out of salary cap room before you fill out the roster.
So if we resign Ovie, he either has to give a team-friendly deal or we are going to be hamstrung with his new contract plus the need to keep trying to optimize the talent around him, which inevitably strains the salary cap and may not even be possible now. If we DON'T try to optimize the team around him, is Ovie going to want to be part of some kind of rebuilding process? That may depend on whether he is more concerned about moving up in the goal-scoring ranks or chasing after more titles. I suspect the latter is of more concern to him. And there is also the undeniable attraction of his homeland.
IF we do not resign Ovie, that makes the rest of a youth movement much easier to carry off. The problem is, if we don't resign him, and especially if it appears we don't make an honest effort to resign him, a substantial portion of the fan base may mutiny.
I personally vote for cutting ties with Ovie. I think the idea of trying to retool a legitimate Stanley Cup contender around a 36-year-old Ovie is unrealistic, certainly in the current salary cap circumstances. I don't think it makes any more sense than, say, a political party tying its future to a 75-year-old man who is overweight, out of shape, and has abominable eating habits.
