After a second round playoff exit, the Washington Capitals look to their experienced youth to get them back to the playoffs.
When the season started last year, the Caps looked like the team to beat. They had a hot start, and their young core players helped the team take an early lead in the Southeast Division and Eastern Conference. It looked as if they could go far in the playoffs, but their inability to cope with adversity and injuries came to be their downfall.
The team barely escaped the New York Rangers in the first round of the playoffs, and the playoff veterans, the Pittsburgh Penguins, proved to be too much for them in the second round. It wasn’t that the team was out-matched against the Penguins, they were just unable to adjust the way they played on the fly. Injuries took several of their key players, like Mike Green and Alexander Semin, and their role players didn’t know how to step up.
With another year of playoff hockey under their belt, it will be those same role players that will make the difference for the Capitals in the 2009-10 season. Players like Brooks Laich, David Steckel and Milan Jurcina will make or break the team’s season. It is no secret that Washington’s Alex Ovechkin and company can score goals, but it is what happens when they are taken away that will make them an undisputed powerhouse.
In the Stanley Cup Finals last year, it was the Penguins’ role players like Bill Guerin and Rob Scuderi who scored some of the most important goals of their series. Washington signed Mike Knuble and Brendan Morrison in the offseason, two players who will most replace the roles filled by Guerin and Scuderi. Once the two of them begin to form some chemistry with their new teammates, the Capitals could become a multi-line scoring threat.
Scoring when Backstrom, Semin, Ovechkin and Green were not on the ice was the team’s biggest problem last year. All four played shifts that topped two minutes in the second, almost a minute more than their regular season averages. With the longer shifts, the four were unable to play deeper into games, eliminating the team’s scoring threat.
While Knuble and Morrison are two veterans who will make their presence known, it is the new young guns that must fulfill roles when their All-Star teammates are winded. Steckel is one player who came into his own in the playoffs against the Penguins. The 6’5’’, 222 pound left wing stepped up for the Caps in the second round when Semin was sidelined with a broken foot. He finally realized his size and used it to the team’s advantage.
It will be the watershed moments from the team’s youth that define their season. Steckel, along with rookie Karl Alzner, who will most likely make the team, are two players to watch this year. Not only are they good players, but they have their youth and are experienced. It is this combination that can be deadly. Many teams overlook the young players on the third and fourth lines, but you never know when they just might score a game-winning goal in overtime, in the playoffs.
You can reach this staff writer at sports@theeagleonline.com.
