It was an odd year to be a Caps fan. After they exceeded expectations last year, they of course got rewarded with higher expectations, and did not quite live up to them. There's a business adage about under promising and over delivering, and it's because if you say it will be done Friday, but deliver Thursday, people will be pleasantly surprised. They sort of never talk about how next time, they will just subtract a day from whatever you say, that you can only under promise so much, before people expect constant over delivering.
Each season is of course it's own thing. And then a player or three gets injured. Folks leave in the summer. And the calendar provides a different number of matchups. Plus of course the Olympics meant that the calendar was hard this year. Less breaks, less rest all the way through.
And, as happens when you are an athlete of a certain age, they started talking about Ovechkin as old, despite the numbers he was putting up. As a person of a certain age, I am aware that age will make itself felt in recovery, in rebound, in speed loss.
And then at the trade deadline, the Caps traded away two key players. Clearly they were planning for future seasons, not the one we were still playing. And, as Ovie has said in interviews, as a player that's hard. If you have twenty games left to play, but management already thinks you can't win, it's hard to play hard. To risk your body for that.
I know we are closer to the post-Ovie part of the Caps than not. I hope he gets to finish out however he would like.