A Failed off-Season? Capitals Do Not Address Defense

From Washington-Capitals-Examiner~y2009m9d1-A-failed-offseason-Capitals-do-not-address-defense">Washington Capitals Examiner

It might seem an odd analogy to make, but this Capitals off-season to me kind of played out like that children’s tale “The Emperors New Clothes”…Huh?

Well, without forcing you to recall that desultory period as a child where you were forced to sit still and read or get read to quietly, I’ll try to give you a brief synopsis of why I think the “New Clothing” parable fits.

In “The Emperors New Clothes,” you have a guy whose one and only focus in life is acquiring a nicer pair of clothing.

This singular goal unsurprisingly becomes an obsession that takes on a life of its own as the Emperors outwardly focused aspiration for trying to acquire nicer things makes him so absolutely blind to what’s going on in the here-and-now. This manifests itself so strongly that in the end he actually gets connived into believing that he has purchased a beautiful new pair of clothes when he is actual buck-naked. This leads obviously to much embarrassment and to the first conscribed marking of the idea to, “check thyself before ye wrecks oneself.” Anyways, short cliffnotes moral: Take heed not to walk into a metal pole even as you look up at the stars. Shorter moral: Take care of your most immediate need first.   

So how does this relate? Well in this off-season, the Capitals who no longer had the services of Victor Kozlov or Sergei Federov, moved to shore up their offense with two excellent acquisitions in Brendan Morrison and the universally praised Mike Knuble.

These were two great moves. However, if you do recall, it wasn’t a lack of offense that caused the Capitals to lose in the playoffs, it was a lack of defense. And like an emperor who was so focused on acquiring nice clothes, that he didn’t notice he was wearing nothing at all, the Capitals by focusing all their off-season energy on acquiring offense while neglecting to make any move on defense, have forgotten to do the most important thing. We have forgotten to take care of their most immediate need, defense.

19, was the amount of goals the Caps gave up in what would be their last four games of the playoffs against the Penguins. It’s an abysmal number and throughout that series I must have seen Sidney Crosby score more than half of his eight playoff goals against us in front of the net.  Disgusting.  

And while a defensive roster with Mike Green, Tom Poti, David Steckel, Shoane Morrison, Milan Jurcina, John Erskine, Brian Pothier, and hopefully Karl Alzner and John Carlson isn’t bad, the Capitals just do not have one elite shutdown defenseman. That’s a big problem.  

Green might be great offensively, but he is not a shutdown defenseman. Tom Poti is great at keeping his composure while being pressured in his own zone, but he is not a shutdown defenseman. As great we all expect Karl Alzner and John Carlson to be a couple years down the road, I doubt that right now they are the difference between a 2nd or 3rd round exit, and a trip to the Stanley Cup.

And while it’s great that the Capitals are developing from within and going with some youth, let‘s not forget what we need. Sure such a measured and patient approach should pay major dividends in the future but part of me wonders if are looking too far into the future. We are so close to maybe winning it all! Two slightly different overtime games and it could have been the Capitals not the Penguins going to the Stanley Cup. Of course then that would lead to a spurious assumption then that Pittsburgh forwards weren’t allowed free-clearance in front of our net. That just wasn’t the case.

Still, with the group we have now it may have only taken one more solid veteran hand to allow the Capitals to get to that next level. For now though something is clearly missing. Only John Erskine plays with an edge in his game, and while Erskine is physical, he doesn’t have the talent to be a premiere defender.

Now this doesn’t mean that you need someone who plays like Erskine, and runs people over at any and all opportunity, but if the Capitals are going to try to play defense with controlled competency, they need one more guy who can do it, without making the mistakes that we saw last playoffs.  Jay McKee, could have been this guy. Pair McKee, Mike Green, Brian Pothier or Tom Poti and you instantly have a steady 1st line of defense. Alas, that’s only a pipedream as Pittsburgh acquired the solid defenseman for only 800,000.

And if McKee wasn’t the ticket, the Capitals could have made a high risk move to try to get an elite  defenseman who plays with more edge than any guy not named Sean Avery. Chris Pronger wouldn’t have come cheap. The Flyers made a big risk by trading one regular, one semi-regular, a minor leaguer and three draft picks for the controversial defenseman who many accuse of playing dirty.  In the end though it might have been worth it. "I think in terms of where we’re at as a team right now, I think we’re better today than maybe we were yesterday," Flyers General Manager Anaheim-Chris-Pronger/AnswerViewer.do?requestId=54586174" target="_blank">Paul Holmgren said at the time of Pronger‘s signing. Compare that win now approach of the Flyers to the approach Capitals General Manager George McPhee took this past trading deadline when the Caps made no moves. “"We'd like to be a good team for a number of years and be knocking on the door every year, rather than sort of load up and hope you can do it one year.” said McPhee at the time.

And McPhee will get his wish. The Capitals will be a “good team” and had a “good” off-season. So far they have by all appearances passed up the opportunity to be great, and that’s a problem. In the NHL, “good” doesn’t usually win you the Stanely Cup.