Strategically, I think most outside fans don't understand where the Caps are. This team was very good two years ago and by every underlying metric (and even the "overlying" ones like goal difference, wins, and points) should have at minimum made the playoffs this year. They have one of the better U21 trios in the league in Leonard/Protas/Hutson, but they also have a lot of very good players right in the middle of their prime in Wilson, Chychrun, PLD, Thompson, etc.. The old guard is gone. They do not rely on Ovi anymore and if he comes back it will be for only one more year. They have a ton of great depth but needed at least one more elite goalscoring forward no matter what Ovi does next year. They went out and got two of the top available options
Tactically of course it is too much money for too long, even with the cap going up. It will almost certainly be bad when Tuch is 35, which is fine, but there is real risk he falls off earlier. That being said, this isn't the flat cap era and money/contracts just simply do not matter as much as they did. Good players also just do not change teams as often and when they do it's always going to be a trade where the value you gain on the contract is offset by the assets you have to give up. It's just much more important right now to get good players than to be "efficient" and this is what the Caps did. I'd rather spend money inefficiently on a good player than not at all on no one
