Its hard to imagine a team in recent memory having a worse summer than the Washington Capitals. The Capitals lost Justin Williams to free agency, they lost Nate Schmidt to the expansion draft, failed to retain the services of Kevin Shattenkirk, traded Marcus Johanson for a crate of grapefruits, and signed Kuznetsov and Oshie to contracts so ridiculous Dave Nonis sent a congratulatory email.
I know it's unconscionable that someone with such an important job as President of a hockey team would just wing it like an incompetent with no plan, but that does in fact seem to be the case.
Literally the only good thing the Capitals did this summer was let Karl Alzner walk away.
Other than that, it's been a disaster.
It's hard to remember that even though the team has seemingly been ran into the ground, that a team with Backstrom, Ovechkin, Kuznetsov, Orlov and Holtby is still going to be pretty damn good.
The problem is that the Capitals don't have the prospects to step in and replace the lost players on the cheap. Other than Jakub Vrana, who in the system is NHL ready? (And even he is overrated due to the lack of other prospects; he didn't even get a point-per-game in the AHL last year).
The Capitals top two defense prospects, Madison Bowey and Christian Djoos, are decent enough prospects, but they aren't the kind of guys who you feel good about subbing in for Kevin Shattenkirk.
The Capitals are in a bit of a pickle here. No cap room to improve, no prospects to plug and play, and no immediate obvious way in which they can get better - they are a team built to win now who just made a whole bunch of moves to keep the window open.....but it looks like that in order to do so, they just shot themselves in the foot.
The current roster is not good enough to be the best team in the NHL again, they are screwed for the future, and have no obvious path to improvement.
The Capitals need to make a bold move.
They need to pay (heavily if necessary) someone to take the contract of Brooks Orpik and then mortgage whatever picks and prospects they have left in order to give themselves a chance to win this year.
Anyways, the Caps can't possibly be done for the summer.
What's next?