They really shouldn’t be here.
On February 13th, a 6-3 drubbing at the hands of the Colorado Avalanche had left the Washington Capitals with their 9th loss in their last 10 games. Their points percentage of .519% was good enough for the second-lowest mark in the Metropolitan Division.
After a couple of dominant wins against the Penguins and Blackhawks proved to be too little, too late to avoid selling at the deadline and expanding their draft capital, the Caps embarked on a trip out to Western Canada that included games against the Jets, Canucks and Oilers–three of the top-five teams in the Western Conference by points percentage. On paper it would be one of the most daunting stretches of the season for the new-look Washington squad, with back-to-back listless performances in Winnipeg and Edmonton setting the tone for the rest of the year.
| Seattle Kraken vs Washington Capitals | ||||
| Team | P1 | P2 | P3 | Total |
 Seattle Kraken | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
 Washington Capitals | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| Current Status: Final | ||||
Hm. Well, Seattle has been slipping as of late. Their tilt a couple of nights later against the league-leading Vancouver Canucks would continue the trend of getting rolled by top-tier contenders.
| Vancouver Canucks vs Washington Capitals | ||||
| Team | P1 | P2 | P3 | Total |
 Vancouver Canucks | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
Washington Capitals | 0 | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| Current Status: Final | ||||
Oh. Well…
| Calgary Flames vs Washington Capitals | ||||
| Team | P1 | P2 | P3 | Total |
 Calgary Flames | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 |
Washington Capitals | 1 | 3 | 1 | 5 |
| Current Status: Final | ||||
Um…nice to see them put a little bit of a run together? But like I said, this team was in a race with the Columbus Blue Jackets to avoid the bottom spot of the division a month ago. Their goal differential still sits at -26, the 6th-worst mark in the league. The Eastern wild card race has been way too competitive for a team like this to—
?????????????
For most of this season, making the playoffs felt like a longshot. Even during stretches where the Caps were winning, such as their 9-1-1 stretch from October 25th to November 22nd, all underlying numbers suggested that this was a team much closer to the bottom of the league than even the middle.
Still, the Caps have been able to spend most of the year hovering on the outside-looking-in of the East’s wild card race, doing just enough to keep themselves from falling out into the abyss. It’s put the fanbase in a very fun “tank or no tank” debate, with some bemoaning the idea of watching an old, clearly in decline core limp into the playoffs where they’d be sure to be dismantled by a contending team and be rewarded with the 15th pick in the draft.
All of a sudden, that idea isn’t just possible, but increasingly probable.
The idea of what kind of team the Caps would ice in the spring needs to be reconsidered, however. If Washington is still playing hockey in May, it won’t be an aged roster with waning effectiveness barely keeping things afloat as the organization stubbornly chose to avoid rebuilding. In many ways, that rebuild is already underway. With Nicklas Backstrom and Evgeny Kuznetsov gone, recent draft picks in Connor McMichael and Hendrix Lapierre have gotten the chance to center their own lines, with Aliaksei Protas also getting steady playing time in a top-6 role.
Room has also been cleared for Ivan Miroshnichenko to have a trial run in that top-6, one that he’ll keep through the rest of the season because he earned it. The rookie, who turned 20-years-old last month, has posted some of the strongest offensive impacts on the team across the 6 games he’s played this month. He’s collected the first three points of his career, while being at or near the top in most underlying metrics on the team. Entering last night’s action, his on-ice xGF/60 rate of 3.75 led all Caps forwards in the time since he’s been called up from Hershey. He, like several other prospects on this team, are proving that they belong as regulars on the main club.
It’d be one thing if we were weighing the prospects of getting a top-five pick in the draft vs an unceremonious first round thumping with a core long past its shelf life. That is not the case here. This Caps team, while still highly flawed, resembles what most who called for a rebuild would have wanted. It’s a team that is gradually moving to infuse youth into the lineup, allow room for them to play through mistakes, and live with however far that makeup takes them. If it happens to sink them further in the standings as was expected, so be it. If it happens to grant them an improbable playoff appearance? All of a sudden, things are a lot more interesting for Washington’s immediate and long-term future, to say the least.
Ultimately, the Capitals are currently playing with house money. They’re in a position where no matter what happens in these last 15 games of the season, seeing a slew of their highly-touted prospects over the last few years establish themselves as NHL players going forward is a positive takeaway that means more than wherever they pick in the draft, or whatever a hypothetical playoff run looks like. For a team whose future outlook seemed so bleak to begin this season, the Caps have created a scenario where they can walk away from this season optimistic about the future, regardless of how this year ends.
In all, the Caps really shouldn’t be here. But hey, if any franchise would know about a seemingly undeserving team sneaking into the playoffs and inexplicably getting hot…