Follow @james_tanner123 It's almost hilarious: the President's Trophy Winning, best team in the NHL Washington Capitals had possibly the worst summer (from a team-building perspective) in the History of the NHL, dressed a top-heavy team with what seems like dozens of non-NHL players, and then had two of their best remaining players go hit the long-term I.R before the season was even ten games old.
If hockey mattered at all, you could say it was down right Shakespearean.
Burakovsky had surgery on his left thumb today. He's expected to miss six to eight weeks. That's a blow to the Caps.
— Isabelle Khurshudyan (@ikhurshudyan) October 24, 2017
Oh man!
But it doesn't, so you can't. But if you dig the team, it still sucks pretty bad.
Whether it was failing to spend the required draft picks to keep Nate Schmidt, giving away Marcus Johansson for nothing, overpaying for Kuznetsov, failing to spend the capital to get someone to take Orpik or paying T.J Oshie for an unrepeatable super-lucky season that cost them Williams, Winnik, Shattenkirk and Johansson that cost the Capitals their season, it's hard to say.
Don't believe me? Here are the real defense pairings an actual NHL team is going to use in a regular season game:
No change in defense pairs:
— Isabelle Khurshudyan (@ikhurshudyan) October 24, 2017
Djoos-Carlson
Orpik-Bowey
Orlov-Chorney
The next game will be against the Canucks, a team the Capitals may seriously be competing with later this year for the 1st overall draft pick. The Capitals will be looking for just their third regulation win in the tenth game of the season tomorrow.