The Washington Capitals are unlikely to make the playoffs. HockeyViz says they’ve got an 18 percent chance; Dom Luczyszyn has them at 10 percent; Moneypuck says it’s 2 percent. This season’s sputtering campaign is the not-entirely-unpredictable result of a dual strategy by Capitals GM Brian MacLellan to a) execute a low-key rebuild, while also b) making a conspicuous effort to win with a series of outside-chance bets. Regular-season success for the Caps was contingent on low-risk/high-reward, long-shot bets. They’ve mostly lost.
For reasons I will not explain, each “bet” will be scored using a scale of one to five tanktops, or 🎽, using two metrics. The first is risk: how much the team stood to gain (or lose) from the bet. The second is result: how well the bet paid off. These are not all bets in the common sense, but sometimes more like circumstances that required cost-benefit analysis and decisions by the team’s front office.
Nicklas Backstrom’s hip
It was always unlikely Backstrom would be able to come back from his life-altering hip surgery. Back in April 2023, MacLellan signaled that Backstrom’s future was ultimately up to the player. In the preseason, Backstrom said he was “100 percent,” but he played just eight games before entering the limbo between long-term injured reserve and overt retirement.
I doubt MacLellan ever banked on Backstrom returning to form in 2023-24, but had it happened it would have been the single biggest improvement the team could have had. Instead, Washington’s center depth is in terrible shape.
Bet risk: 🎽 out of 5 tanktops
Bet result: 🎽 out of 5 tanktops
Evgeny Kuznetsov’s last chance
The enigmatic Russian forward has had a long and contentious track record since the team’s Cup win in 2018. Too long for me to recount here, but it includes drug use, behavioral problems, denied trade requests, and a lowered role on the ice (despite still ranking near the top of Washington’s ice-time getters).
Many quantitative rankings now place Kuznetsov at the bottom of the league, a devastating blow to a team that used to rely on him to drive scoring above expected levels. Now he’s on pace to score less than half the points you predicted for him in the preseason.
Kuznetsov’s collapse is also Washington’s collapse. The possible future in which Kuznetsov’s second renaissance gave the Caps’ aging core one last gasp is gone. I think MacLellan has long known the comeback isn’t coming.
Bet risk: 🎽 out of 5 tanktops
Bet result: 🎽 out of 5 tanktops
Ethan Bear’s shoulder
Bear, 26, got hurt in last summer’s World Championship tournament, spoiling his free-agency plans. He didn’t sign a new NHL deal until December, when he chose the Capitals, who he said, “want me here instead of needing me.” But Bear’s time as a Cap has not been smooth. He drew criticism from head coach Spencer Carbery just a couple of weeks into his season and was a healthy scratch within a month.
Washington’s defensive corps might be tied with their center depth for the team’s biggest roster problem. The Bear deal was MacLellan trying to solve it on the cheap: an interesting player in the wake of an injury. He hoped to buy low and capitalize on the recovery. It has not worked.
Bet risk: 🎽🎽 out of 5 tanktops
Bet result: 🎽🎽 out of 5 tanktops
Max Pacioretty’s Achilles
Pacioretty, 35, has lost most of the last three seasons to repeated injuries to his Achilles tendon. I had assumed his career was over last summer, but his agent said eight to ten teams were interested in him before the Caps won his services.
Pacioretty’s recovery wasn’t complete until January, and his early returns were concerning. “It probably couldn’t get any worse than it did tonight for me,” he said of his first game (in his defense, he was only a minus-1). While goal-scoring has not returned (he has one), Pacioretty has proved productive in playmaking, getting four assists in his last five games and demonstrating chemistry with Dylan Strome and TJ Oshie. But a pro-rated pace of under ten goals is still a steep drop-off for a player who used to be good for thirty a season.
For Brian MacLellan, the Pacioretty deal was – again – an outside chance to get a promising player at a bargain-bin price due to injury, The Caps needed Pacioretty’s top-level scoring, but he doesn’t seem to have it anymore.
Bet risk: 🎽🎽 out of 5 tanktops
Bet result: 🎽 out of 5 tanktops
Alex Ovechkin’s age
This one is hard. Alex Ovechkin is the most important player in franchise history, and any contract he signs is automatically a win from business and culture perspectives. But with an under-twenty-goal pace in his age-38 year, Ovechkin’s season suggests he’s hit a wall.
I’m not so sure about that. While Ovechkin has seen a modest shot-rate decline and rumors abound that he’s fighting injury, his disaster of a season seems mostly driven by poor finishing. That’s comforting to me when I imagine his future, even if it’s devastating to the team in the present tense.
Brian MacLellan knows the Ovechkin train is slowing down, and the lack of scoring is killing them right now, but I don’t think the long-term situation is quite so dire.
Bet risk: 🎽🎽🎽🎽 out of 5 tanktops
Bet result: 🎽 out of 5 tanktops
Anthony Mantha’s last chance
Mantha was brought to the Capitals to score goals, and he had not done enough of it in his first few years with the club. And while his underlying play was always strong, something always looked off with him. Even he admits it: “I don’t think it’s necessarily the points and goals that [ex-coach Peter Laviolette is] mad about,” Mantha said last year. “It’s more the rest of [my] game. Just my work ethic. Right now that’s what I need to do if I want to get back in the lineup, and I’ll have to show them.”
I won’t pretend to know about his work ethic or the glide in Mantha’s game, but the goals are here. He’s got 15 in 43 games, second on the team (behind Strome), and just shy of a 30-goal pace. While a lot of that success is driven by a 19.5 shooting percentage, they don’t ask how; they ask how many.
Mantha’s goal realization comes too late to help this iteration of the team, but I think the GM will appreciate it before the trade deadline.
Bet risk: 🎽🎽🎽 out of 5 tanktops
Bet result: 🎽🎽🎽 out of 5 tanktops
TJ Oshie’s durability
Oshie had four distinct injuries last season. He’s had multiple shoulder surgeries and a recurring back problem, for which he left the team in January to see a chiropractor. At age 37, he’s undeniably banged up. But when he’s on the ice, he’s still got it. He came back from treatment to score a thrilling game-winning goal and recorded a hat trick one week later. And it’s not just luck.
Oshie’s individual offense rates are up over previous seasons in every metric except goals, which are depressed by 7.3 percent shooting (about half his normal rate). Oshie is generally improving the play of his linemates, plus he gives the power play a consistent threat in the slot. If he’s in the game, the game is better for it.
The only doubt is how many games he can play. Brian MacLellan knows this is the case as amortization is inevitable with aging players. Let’s just appreciate what we’ve got while we’ve still got it.
Bet risk: 🎽 out of 5 tanktops
Bet result: 🎽🎽🎽 out of 5 tanktops
Tom Wilson’s ACL
In August, the Capitals and Tom Wilson agreed on a seven-year, $45.5 million contract extension. That deal means Wilson will be under contract longer than any other Caps player not named Aliaksei Protas (through 2030-31, which feels like a date from a cyberpunk book) and therefore a crucial piece of the post-Ovechkin era.
When that contract was signed, Wilson was still somewhat recovering from ACL surgery after a season with good boxcar stats but worrying underlying numbers. To folks on the outside, the contract seemed a big risk, but Brian MacLellan must have had better information. Wilson has been great in 2023-24, driving play and enjoying upticks in individual goal-scoring if not assist-getting (see the Ovechkin section above). One of the most encouraging signs to me is that he seems to have his legs again.
I don’t know how Wilson will play over the infinity years left on his deal, but he is earning his paycheck today, and the team has chosen well in their obvious next captain.
Bet risk: 🎽🎽🎽🎽🎽 out of 5 tanktops
Bet result: 🎽🎽🎽🎽 out of 5 tanktops
Charlie Lindgren’s prove-it year
When Lindgren, 30, signed his three-year deal with the Capitals in 2022, he was an unproven goalie with limited experience and the chance of upside. At $1.1 million dollars, the risk to Brian MacLellan was negligible. He saved four goals worse than expected in that first year, which is still frankly a fine return on the investment. But 2023-24 has been a breakout year for Lindgren, who now rates among the best goalies in the league.
With 10.1 goals better than average, Lindgren ranks in the league’s top ten by raw count. He’s expressly trusted by Spencer Carbery, as evidenced by back-to-back starts on January 13 and 14. The goalies around him in the stack ranking (aside from Jonathan Quick) generally make four to eight times his salary.
As far as low-risk/high-reward signings, Brian MacLellan’s bet on Charlie Lindgren has paid off hugely. I wonder if he’d consider trading in that betting slip. He’d get a king’s ransom in return.
Bet risk: 🎽 out of 5 tanktops
Bet result: 🎽🎽🎽🎽🎽 out of 5 tanktops
Like Nick Backstrom, the Capitals are in their own kind of limbo. They’re competing, but not really. Brian MacLellan has suggested he was in the market for a center all season long, but he didn’t pull the trigger in the fall and now it’s probably too late. Aside from the big Wilson extension and Protas’ five-year deal, they’ve been stingy in term. The other deals they’ve made in the past year have been low-risk and short-term: Pacioretty, Bear, Aube-Kubel, and Edmundson. They’ve got fourteen contracts that will expire after next season.
They’ve been rebuilding all along, but taking just enough chances so that it wasn’t glaringly obvious.
