The Fat Lady hasn’t sung quite yet, but after an Anthony Mantha giveaway gave the Penguins a 4-3 win on Saturday, the Capitals were essentially eliminated from the playoffs.
But don’t tell that to defenseman Trevor van Riemsdyk, who after the Capitals’ latest loss on Wednesday night, a 2-1 failing to the New York Islanders, spoke to the press about how The Team Is Still In This.
Per TVR’s interview via NHL.com:
Yeah, we know how it looks. We can do the math and we know where we stand. It’s going to take a heck of an April here. We’ve done it before, we had a heck of a December; we strung some (wins) together. We’re healthy right now, we’ve got everyone back, so there’s no reason why we can’t do that again. So we’re going to focus on what we can control and win the games in front of us. If that’s enough, we hope that it is. It’s all we can control.
Including tonight’s game against the Tampa Bay Lightning, the Caps have seven games left, with a maximum of 91 points available in the standings if they win all of them (which is four points fewer than what they’d need to make the playoffs in a best-case scenario per their own team’s GM). The Capitals are in 12th in the Eastern Conference and trail the second wild-card spot by five points, with the Florida Panthers, Buffalo Sabres, and Ottawa Senators all between them and eighth-place Pittsburgh. Though the Capitals haven’t reached mathematical elimination yet, it would take a miracle to leapfrog all four teams, even with a perfect performance. MoneyPuck put their odds at 0.2% after the Caps’ loss on Wednesday.
Playoff odds as of Thursday https://t.co/2nMPy5HBwX pic.twitter.com/aM1dGFjbSW
— MoneyPuck.com (@MoneyPuckdotcom) March 30, 2023
van Riemsdyk’s optimism and wanting to win is admirable. But what else is he going to say? Despite selling at the Trade Deadline, Capitals head coach Peter Laviolette continues to talk about “big” games and having a single-minded focus on trying to make the playoffs. TVR can’t go against Laviolette and that narrative. The team’s general manager, Brian MacLellan, has not helped matters either. The Capitals could have used these remaining games to focus even more on next season, giving the team’s top prospects playing time to see what they have. Instead, the Capitals are capped out as the season winds down. They have $77,950 of cap space available as of Thursday, March 30.
This lack of foresight and cohesion makes the Capitals rudderless. They’re still focused on the status quo and a near-impossible goal as the clock runs out in the current season. Though van Riemsdyk noted he and the other defensemen were developing chemistry for next season, he reiterated that the top priority was trying to make the playoffs this year.
Headline photo: Alan Dobbins/RMNB
