Capitals' Stanley Cup holdovers confident team can bounce back in 2023-24

Caps' Cup holdovers confident team can bounce back in 2023-24 originally appeared on NBC Sports Washington

It took until the 73rd game of the 2022-23 NHL season for the Washington Capitals to have all six players remaining from their 2018 Stanley Cup team on the ice together. That group -- Alex Ovechkin, John Carlson, Tom Wilson, Nicklas Backstrom, Evgeny Kuznetsov and T.J. Oshie -- still makes up the bulk of Washington's core.

Injuries largely defined this past campaign for the Capitals. Carlson, Wilson and Backstrom all played 40 games or fewer, Oshie played in just 58 contests and Ovechkin was sidelined for consecutive games multiple times this season. So, it's no surprise the injury-riddled year concluded with Washington missing the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the first time in nine seasons.

Despite the season ending earlier than the group might've expected back in October, several players of the Capitals' core are confident the team will return to being a contender next year.

"You can see when we’re missing Osh, when we’re missing Backy, Willie, Carly, me, I don’t think we played well long enough together to set up the standard [of] what we wanted to do," Ovechkin said.

“I think the core group here has been with each other for a long time and, obviously, we’re not happy about the situation," Backstrom added. "I think with this group we can regroup and start fresh next year and hopefully we can get together as a team and really start off the right way."

Staying healthy next season will, obviously, be a priority for the Capitals. By having to shuffle the lineup on a game-to-game basis, it was difficult for the group to find the chemistry and momentum needed to win consistently.

“I don’t think we were consistent enough to get success," Ovechkin said. "We won one game, we would lose two games ... [There were] lots of reasons why we never had that kind of success, lots of injuries, lines changing most of the time. And when you’re healthy, you stick with all four lines to find chemistry and to find different ways to find success.”

No Capitals player is happy the team missed the playoffs, but one silver lining is a longer summer than normal. That equates to more time to rest from the grind of last season, but also more time to train, prepare and get their bodies in shape for 2023-24.

For an older core, extended time off is viewed as a benefit.

"I think everyone talks about the age of some of our guys," Oshie said. "So what better way to go against that than to give these guys the ability to train for four months and really get ready like some teams are able to."

Oshie specifically mentioned two teams, the New Jersey Devils and Buffalo Sabres, as clubs that benefitted from missing the playoffs last year. Both teams were among the fastest in the NHL this season, something Oshie believes was due to the extended time they had to train. New Jersey returned to the playoffs for the first time in five seasons, while Buffalo exceeded all expectations as a rebuilding franchise and is considered in NHL circles to have a bright future.

Capitals general manager Brian MacLellan stated during his end-of-year press conference that the Capitals need to play faster next season. The added time off should, for the Capitals' sake, allow their older veterans the chance to prepare this summer to play at a faster pace next year.

"I’m super optimistic that next year is going to be fun and exciting and you’re going to see some guys get back to how they looked in previous years," Oshie said. "I think this team is going to look a lot more like what we’re used to."

Turning the Capitals back into Stanley Cup contenders falls on more shoulders than just Washington's six 2018 holdovers, though. That core played a significant role in leading the Capitals to the title, but multiple young players stepped up along the way.

"Even when we won, we had a bunch of veteran guys with a ton of experience and we had guys like [Jakub] Vrana and [Chandler] Stephenson and a bunch of young guys juiced that were first-year guys," Wilson said. "So, you got to find a balance of what works and when the team hits their stride, it can be really good."

MacLellan wants to add multiple younger pieces to the lineup to complement the veteran core with moves similar to the signing of Dylan Strome last summer and the trade deadline acquisition of Rasmus Sandin. The Capitals GM also made it clear he's looking for more production out of the team's top-six forwards next season and left all avenues open to get that done.

For the Capitals to truly return to the NHL's elite, they'll need a combination of better health, more veteran production and a handful of younger players - some not currently on the roster - to step up.

"There’s going to be probably a second wave of what we need younger guys to come in and start pulling their weight and adding and complementing the core that's getting a little bit older," Wilson said. "I'll be probably a little bit of a hybrid of that in the middle and you try and, as a group, come together."

Wilson, who at 29 years old is the youngest player remaining from the Capitals' Stanley Cup team, joined his teammates by expressing confidence in the older core being able to turn things around.

"The core group, the older guys that they've been the superstars for this team for so long, they still got game," he said. "So, hopefully, we can switch a couple of things up and, like I said, [are] not too far from getting back to playing really good hockey."

For Washington, the hope is that the humility that came with the 2022-23 season will motivate the group even more to turn things around quickly.

"We’re still hungry in here and we still want to win," Backstrom added. "We need to turn this around.”