Capitals managed to make an insanely good team rebuilding on the fly, the Protas bros are awesome
Most people had them on the downswing the past few years and were laughing at them for not rebuilding
They did retool though. Retool, rebuild, ... i mean call it what you want but they did not do what we did the past 30 years which was MOARRRR VETS gotta trade kids for vets to stay relevant and gotta extend meh vets until they are 35 for stupid salary (which is strangely what most of our fans want us to do now go figure ...)
Nope they traded for Sandin who was 22
They traded for Strome who was 25.
They traded for PLD who is 26. Like the player or not he's not old.
They traded for Chychrun who is 26 again not old.
They made room for McMichael and Protas.
They continue to try kids like Lapierre and Miroshnichenko and give them games to eveluate them
Ultimately because they made some room they finished low one year and drafted 8th and grabbed Leonard
My main problem with anti tankers is they see this as a black and white situation. It's not. There's multiple path to a rebuild/retool/makeover/whatever... But unless you're a prime destination for UFAs there's mostly just only one path to turn a team around and it is going for younger players and letting some of your vets go. Caps still a very old team because of Ovy, Eller, Carlsson and cie but makes no mistake they turned things around because of Protas, McMichael, Strome, Sandin, Chychrun and yeah a little bit PLD too.