and yet, the organization NEEDS to get better and dump major salary to do so.
I'm curios, Do you have ANY opinions on how they can do that? Or are they supposed to remain stagnant for the joy of the fans in the regular season?
I think Ted Leonsis may be trapped.
When Ovechkin came into the league, Ted promised him that he would do all he could to build a Stanley-Cup-contending team around him, and try to maintain that status to give him as many chances as possible to win Cups. While one may quibble with the types of teams that have been built to try to accomplish this, to me there is no question that Ted has made a good-faith attempt to keep that promise. And the franchise did achieve it, once.
Players have come and gone continuously over these past 15 years, but the team has never really "reloaded" or "rebuilt" during that time. The emphasis has always been on incremental changes to try to shore up weak areas and make the team "just that little bit better." That is a TOUGH way to build up to a championship -- to try to maintain a core that becomes increasingly expensive and inevitably ages over the years, and find just the right complementary pieces to get over the top.
To me, there has been one, and only one, exception to that rule, and that was letting Holtby go. But that decision was driven partially by the Caps finally pricing themselves into a Salary Cap corner, and partially by Holtby's deteriorating performance after 2018. It seems to me that this past season was the one that the Caps should have taken the opportunity to make some major changes, if they were going to ever do it while Ovechkin was still around. The combination of having untested goalies, and the uncertainty surrounding how the season would play out due to COVID, made this a time to say "Hey, it isn't going to happen this season. Let's try to regroup/reload here." But maybe they couldn't do anything even if they wanted to, because other teams may have pulled in their horns due to COVID uncertainties. They did make one major move, acquiring Mantha. Time will tell how that plays out. But even that really was an incremental rather than a foundational move, because they traded significant draft assets to make it happen.
I think the team needs to take a few steps back to move forward. But I doubt that it happens until Ovechkin leaves the franchise. Until then it will be "do everything to maximize the team's capabilities, and spend up to the salary cap to do it." Once Ovechkin leaves, THEN you will probably see a thorough housecleaning. And Ted will market it as "The beginning of a new era."
