Meltdown in Raleigh Worrisome...
It's getting harder and harder to say that the Washington Capitals coaching change was for the better.
Having lost 20 of 37 under Dale Hunter, the Caps are now legitimately on the verge of missing the playoffs.
Despite sitting among bubble teams, the Capitals recent play hasn't even been indicative of a team capable of hanging with the bubble teams.
It's become a Captastrophe.
And, all the while, Bruce Boudreau has been turning around a devastating year in Orange County.
It's a tough pill to swallow, but the truth is becoming very clear, this team is not built to win, they aren't even built to play for each other.
The in-house issues have been stockpiling for a while now and the fact is that the discord is becoming more pronounced with each passing loss.
Even though Mike Green returned over the weekend and skated 21 minutes last night, the fact is that his return wasn't going to automatically change the way the team has been playing. That comes from a group effort.
So, despite the marginal victory that his return was, there's still the matter of getting the team to play up to their talents.
We could easily delve beneath the surface of the team's current problems, but this all stems back to the coaching change and the lack of changes thereafter.
While Washington has been patient in adjusting the roster since Hunter came aboard, it's become quite clear that if he is going to remain at the helm for the foreseeable future, not everyone is going to want to hang around.
And that in itself is just about as big a problem as these Caps have faced.
Coming together was something this team didn't have to deal with prior to this season, evidently a tight group that had formed great chemistry. But now that there have been system changes and role reversals, these players are no longer all on the same page.
It's clear in the way they play, it's clear in how they don't play.
It's an identity crisis the likes of which the Caps haven't had to deal with since the Hanlon era, and that is very troublesome.
With only 6 days left until the trade deadline, the only thing you can count on now is that there will be changes.
George McPhee is staring down two problems at the moment, how to save this season and then how to salvage the progress of the past four seasons moving forward.
Highlighting the need to correct course is the reality that Washington evidently relies far too much on Nicklas Backstrom and Mike Green.
Though Marcus Johansson and John Carlson are developing nicely and Dennis Wideman has had an MVP season replacing the absent Green, the truth is that the Caps haven't been able to come close to the dominant team they used to be.
And considering all it took for them to fall back to earth was the combined absence of two players, albeit important ones, well, it's quite clear that Washington needs to work on shoring up their depth.
Things haven't been this dicey in DC in ages and while it's too soon to rule out a strong finish to the season and a spot in the playoffs, last night's 5-0 loss to the last place Hurricanes is as bright and loud a warning sign as you're going to get.
What are you wishing for, Caps fans?
Rebuild and retool are not words in the Caps vocabulary, especially since they haven't achieved any real success in the playoffs with this club, so how should the team approach the rest of this year and next season?
I will be back with some thoughts on trade bait and targets later on.
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