The phrase “wild card” can have a few meanings. In literal NHL terms, it’s the label given to the teams that earn the final pair of playoff berths in either conference. Colloquially, it’s can be deployed either positively as a compliment or derisively to describe the potential impact of a club that’s hard to read. For instance, the Detroit Red Wings’ resiliency has made them a real wild card in the Eastern playoff scene. Isn’t that wonderful? On the other hand it can be used in relation to a squad that at times looks unstoppable, but has also been known to shrink in big moments. In that vein, you wonder if the Capitals might just go ahead and change their name to the Washington Wild Cards.
At this point, a name switch would be required to officially get “wild card” status and Washington in the same sentence because, barring a shocking series of events in the season’s final week, the Caps are going to miss the playoffs for the first time since Alex Ovechkin’s sophomore campaign of 2006-07. The inevitably difficult off-season questions will have a familiar ring due to the fact the talented Capitals always underwhelmed even when they did make the post-season, failing to advance past round two for six consecutive years beginning in 2008. But where once the Caps seemed incapable of progression, the team is now actively regressing, meaning the coming months could mark wild change in America’s capital.
The Caps’ current identity is linked, of course, to the ongoing Ovechkin era, which has delighted and disappointed, thrilled and chilled since one of the league’s easiest-to-love stars landed in D.C. But almost nine years after the dynamic Russian breathed new life into a wheezing franchise, it’s basically impossible to see Ovechkin as the complete epicentre of a special team. That could be read as an indictment of Ovechkin, but it’s really a comment on the way Washington has been unable to surround a pure goal-scorer with a player or two better suited to the role of Mr. Everything.
Yes, those guys are hard to find, especially when you’re drafting later in the first round as the Caps were while posting inflated point totals thanks to the ineptitude of the old Southeast Division. But Boston signed Zdeno Chara on the open market and found Patrice Bergeron in the second round; St. Louis snagged David Backes 62nd overall; San Jose’s Joe Pavelski was a seventh-rounder and Los Angeles went out and traded good young players to get a rounded one in Mike Richards for their 2012 run to the Cup. Great GMs and their staffs always find a way.
So while longtime Caps GM George McPhee has changed coaches a couple times in recent years and brought in guys with lower-end pedigree like Troy Brouwer and Joel Ward, you wonder if he’ll be the one making whatever moves happen in Washington this summer. McPhee has held his post since 1997, longer than every GM in the league save New Jersey’s Lou Lamoriello and Carolina’s Jim Rutherford (who’s expected to resign that position at season’s end). But with Washington looking increasingly lost in its search for the franchise’s first championship, a new guiding light may be required.
That sure seems like the case when, upon reflection, the pejorative wild card label the team has been saddled with in recent years starts to look less appropriate. The Capitals’ annual plight has, in truth, become quite predictable. And not in a good way.