Thirty-six games into this shortened season, the Washington Capitals sit in a rather unremarkable position, having only just reached the NHL’s version of .500. But while their year has largely been defined by inconsistencies, injuries and various other roadblocks, over the past two weeks the Capitals have begun to see the potential they believed was there from the beginning.
Predominantly healthy for the first time all season, Washington went 5-1-1 in its seven games prior to the NHL trade deadline on Wednesday, and catapulted itself from the bottom of the Eastern Conference standings to two points out of the Southeast Division lead.
Insight on the Capitals and all the latest news from Post reporter Katie Carrera.
So when the deadline arrived, General Manager George McPhee opted not to subtract a single player, but to trade a top prospect and add a top-six winger. The move made the clear statement that the Capitals believe they have a shot at winning in the present, even if this season so far hasn’t gone the way they scripted it.
“You’re here to win. We’ve been in that mode for a while. This is six years of trying to win a Cup,” McPhee said. “We had our rebuild phase, we sort of rebuilt things on the fly here, but we’d like to continue to make the playoffs while we’re doing it.”
Washington traded highly regarded 2012 first-round draft pick Filip Forsberg to the Nashville Predators for veteran winger Martin Erat, who has recorded at least 49 points in eight consecutive seasons prior to this shortened year, and a minor-league prospect, Michael Latta.
Erat, 31, waived a no-trade clause to come to Washington. He has has two years remaining on his current contract with a salary cap hit of $4.5 million per season.
McPhee said he “wasn’t interested” in trading any of Washington’s pending unrestricted free agents because he didn’t believe it would send the message — publicly or to the team — that the goal is to win now.
Those postseason aspirations and expectations are the same things the players hold for themselves. Before the trade deadline passed, several Capitals said they hoped management would show the confidence in the current roster to help it fight for that opportunity.
“I hope to go all in because I don’t ever want to write off a season or anything like that,” defenseman Karl Alzner said. “The fact that we’re on the upswing right now and playing good hockey, it doesn’t matter where we finish. Obviously, we all saw that last year.”
The move is at odds with what has been McPhee’s long-view approach since the 2004-05 lockout of building through the draft and carefully grooming prospects to incorporate into the Capitals’ roster. But in this case, future risk was worth bolstering Washington’s present depth at wing, McPhee said.
“They’re never easy decisions. It takes some guts to do deals sometimes,” McPhee said. “With respect to giving up young players, you’ve got to be careful doing that, but we’ve drafted well enough that we can do it. And I wanted to help this team now.”
As the Capitals and the entire NHL have learned in recent seasons, where a team finishes in the regular season isn’t necessarily an indication of how it might fare in the postseason. Find a way into the playoffs, and anything is possible.
“As players, that’s our only priority is this year — right now and making the playoffs,” Troy Brouwer said. “We squeezed into the playoffs last year and had a good opportunity to make a deep run. . . . This year is no different; I think we have a better team this year than we did last year. I think we sputtered a little bit at the beginning of the season, but we have all the pieces that we need to be a good, competitive team in the playoffs.
With 12 games remaining in the regular season, a sixth consecutive postseason berth seems well within Washington’s reach. The Capitals not only sit two points back of division-leading Winnipeg, but they also have two games in hand, making a fifth division title in the past six years a genuine possibility.
Washington’s remaining regular season games include plenty of winnable matchups — four games against teams currently out of the playoff picture, along with games against bubble teams like themselves, the New York Islanders and Winnipeg Jets. Even though they face teams comfortably in a playoff spot six times, given the way the Capitals appear to be finding their stride under Coach Adam Oates, winning two out of every three games the rest of the way doesn’t seem all that farfetched.
