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Are the Caps this year's biggest frauds?

Preseason plenty of people said the Caps weren't going to make the playoffs. The talk was that the Caps main goal was to putter along while Ovi chipped away at the goals record.

Today they are at the top the East. The off-season moves are planning out. Their main goalie is a Vezina candidate. The coach's system is working. Ovi is scoring like a man possessed.

Weird terminology to call them frauds when there are multiple teams in each conference that enter each season as favorites to go to the SCF then fizzle out. With the parity in this league it's tough to call a team doing what the Caps are doing a fraud.
 
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They are a good team but they won't keep finishing as well as they have and won't get Vezina quality goaltending from Thompson over a full season.

Definitely a playoff team but I don't expect they'll be a contender.
 
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They picked up their 16th win of the season last night when allowing the 1st goal of the game (16-6-4). That's a .692 Points% when spotting 1 goal leads to their opponents. For the season, only 1 other team even has a total Points% above .692 and that's Winnipeg who the Capitals are tied with for the NHL lead (Caps have a game in hand). They're better down 1-0 than 31 other teams are when tied 0-0.
 
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I don't think so.

They made some moves this past offseason that is paying off very well right now.

Capitals have been a playoff team for some time now, but this time they got an upgrade at center and goalie. No surprise they are doing better.
 
The Caps and Jets are the picture of today's NHL. No prime-age superstar forward power. (Don't come at me about Ovie. He's the GOAT and playing amazing, but he's 39.) Instead, they get it done with balance, depth, discipline, grit, great coaching, and stellar tending. I'd argue that FLA is in this same vein. They may have more superstar-ish guys than Washington and Winnipeg, but they don't have anyone on the McD/MacK tier (taking nothing away from Barkov and Tkachuk because they're both awesome).

In the age of parity, this is the way.
 
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43sfriends said:
If you watch him play you'd see how f---ing hard he works to get to the slot before ripping his wicked wristers. Goalies have no chance.

There's nothing lucky about his game, or the Caps season in general. "Luck" is simply what YOU don't understand.
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I went back 4 seasons to see if anyone maintained the shooting percentage Protas is now sporting over the whole season
2020/21 - nobody
2021/22 - Foligno, Barbashev
2022/23 - Kuzmenko
2023/24 - Reinhart

Of those ones, only Reinhart is pacing for 45 goals this season after posting 57 goals last season (and in the playoffs Reinhart was scoring at a 34-per-82 pace).
The other 3 players have never since come close to what they did in these seasons.
So no, you can't flap your arms and fly just because you are hard-working.

Protas has developed in a good 20-goal player; maybe he will be even more than that in a season or two.
But at the moment he is scoring at a 35-goal clip, and his shooting percentage is not going to last.
 
Block said:
In the First period, yeah. Second was even, third was a complete ass kicking by the Caps.
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This is what they do, and what I think people don't understand when they just see them in the visiting viewings: even when they're not their best, which happens in an 82 game season... they're one of the best teams, or at least versions of this team I've ever seen, at going into the intermission and deciding to win collectively and going out and finding maybe 5-10% that wasn't there before.

Suddenly everyone's effort and execution is much stronger, almost just like that. Caps were wildly off-pace in the first period and missing their passes all over, got some of it back, and then went into the second intermission and said "okay, now we put on the work pants" and snapped to attention.

Is it perhaps lucky that they've succeeded this often? Probably, but it's a night and day visual difference between how this team responds and how some of the "win by talent" Caps teams of the past have approached these games. That's why they have this record and the wild comeback games, they have a coach who is getting them in the right mood at the right times to go out there and really buy in and it just. keeps. working.

It worked last year when they were much worse as a roster, it's working now... maybe that man is just good at his job?
 
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Nobody saw the Caps being this good. The smart response would be to find out what we missed, rather than looking to the heavens and calling them 'frauds', 'flukes', 'overachieving', or whatever occult we like to summon when a team does something unexpected.

This happens every single year with at least one team. At the end of a season/playoffs, you are what the results say you are. Results might change next year, but that doesn't diminish this year's results.
 
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Lshap said:
Nobody saw the Caps being this good. The smart response would be to find out what we missed, rather than looking to the heavens and calling them 'frauds', 'flukes', 'overachieving', or whatever occult we like to summon when a team does something unexpected.

This happens every single year with at least one team. At the end of a season/playoffs, you are what the results say you are. Results might change next year, but that doesn't diminish this year's results.
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But usually such team goes back to earth next year, and we have astonished threads, like "what happened to xxx? I thought they gonna be contenders", while in many cases answer is obvious- they were never contenders, just overachievers. This year happened with Canucks.

Don't know if it's the case with the Caps, I watched just one, maybe two of their games (I always start to watch hockey in December), also don't know what their "underlying numbers" says about their sustainability- but when I look at their roster, it just doesn't seem to be one of top teams in league.
 
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acor said:
But usually such team goes back to earth next year, and we have astonished threads, like "what happened to xxx? I thought they gonna be contenders", while in many cases answer is obvious- they were never contenders, just overachievers. This year happened with Canucks.
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You could say that about any team having a great season in virtually any sport: Chances are they won't be as good the next season.
 
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