After a quiet first-round exit, Capitals face tough questions and hard realities

But the hope for a deep postseason run soon washed away Thursday as the Capitals were outworked and out-hustled by Barry Trotz’s Islanders. Away from their families, their home rink and their familiar playoff atmosphere, the Capitals couldn’t muster a challenging, yet not impossible, comeback in the series. .

“We made lots of mistakes in previous games and we didn’t score enough,” Alex Ovechkin said. “How I said, a tough year for both teams. They scored. We didn’t. They scored one goal [Thursday] and we had lots of good chances, lots of good looks, but we didn’t tie the game. You see the result.”

Even before coronavirus took control, there were signs that pointed to a possible early exit. The team had struggled since December. It was putting “Band-Aids” as John Carlson described it, on their miscues, covering up mistakes with big comebacks. After about 50 games, the Capitals’ play started to drop off, Lars Eller said.

“It was around then when we had quite the gap between teams under us and now the lack of urgency drops a little bit, attention to detail … maybe guys got a little tired as well,” Eller said. There are a lot of things that impact why you are losing games.”

The team went 8-9-3 in its final 20 regular season games, and strung together consecutive wins only once in that span. But before the pause, Washington had faith that it knew what playoff hockey looked like, and how it could change gears to succeed.

“It’s frustrating for us that we had more to give and didn’t find a way to do that,” Braden Holtby said.

Carlson had a career offensive year, with captain Alex Ovechkin starting a “Johnny for Norris” hashtag only 11 games into the season. Jakub Vrana, who thrived on the second line alongside “his buddy” T.J. Oshie, once again topped his career goal, assists and points mark and the fourth line grit players of Nic Dowd and Garnet Hathaway started to find their rhythm. Ilya Samsonov, already anointed the team’s goaltender of the future, started to blossom as a backup goaltender.

Ovechkin scored his 700th career goal in late February, an achievement only seven others have accomplished in their careers. During Ovechkin’s pursuit of 700 goals, he had a span of three games when he scored eight times, including back-to-back hat tricks, that was part of a stretch of seven games in which he had 14 goals. He finished the 2019-20 campaign only two shy of 50 goals once again, but won his record ninth “Rocket” Richard Trophy, awarded to the NHL’s top goal scorer. He tied with Boston’s David Pastrnak for the league lead at 48 goals apiece.

Now the focus turns to the future.

“I think we got some incredible talent,” Carlson said. “I think we have some young guys that can really bring it. I think there’s a lot of good days ahead for this team.”

Ovechkin is 34 years old, and 2020-21 is the final season of his 13-year, $124 million contract with the Capitals. General Manager Brian MacLellan said last month that the team would wait until after the playoffs to make any decisions.

Meanwhile, Holtby is now an unrestricted free agent, as is Brenden Dillon, Ilya Kovalchuk and Radko Gudas. Restricted free agents include Jonas Siegenthaler and Travis Boyd. Holtby, who has spent his entire 10-year NHL career in Washington and remained a key part of this group’s core, is now likely on his way out. If this is the end, Holtby will end his career in Washington with a 282-122-46 regular season record over 10 years with a .916 average save percentage.

“Certainly a chance it is,” Holtby said Thursday night, when asked if this could have been his final game with Washington. “Who knows? Live one day at a time and go from there. More right now is just, this one is going to sting for a little bit. Just take one day at a time and see where it leads.”

But, even if Holtby’s tenure is over, waiting in the wings is Samsonov, who had a promising rookie season, going 16-6-2 with a .913 save percentage and a 2.55 goals against average. Samsonov opened the year with an 11-2-1 record, making him the first goaltender in franchise history to record 11 wins in his first 13 starts. His only hiccup came during the pause, when he suffered an off-ice injury while back home in Russia, which left him unable to travel with the team to Toronto.

Dillon has expressed his desire to remain with the Capitals. MacLellan said in late July that he has been speaking to Dillon’s representatives “pretty consistently” since the team acquired the 29-year-old in mid-February. MacLellan said he will continue to have discussions and “see if we can work something out in the end here.”

Gudas already told a Czech media outlet over the pause that he thought there would be “no chance” the team re-signs him, and Kovalchuk is also not expected to remain in Washington next season.

Attention will also turn to Washington’s coaching staff.

Even before the postseason, the team knew there would be at least one change to the Capitals’ coaching staff next season. Reid Cashman, 37, was named head coach of the Dartmouth men’s hockey team in early June. Cashman was in charge of the defense in Washington, where he spent two seasons. He and Scott Arniel were added to Coach Todd Reirden’s staff in August 2018.

Reirden, who for the second straight season could not lead his team past the first round, will now likely face questions about his job security. This year’s exit came at the hands of Trotz, whom Reirden had replaced in Washington.

“Those guys are champions in my mind,” Trotz said Thursday night of the Capitals’ core group. “They always will be. It was one of those series whereas a coach when you go through a series like that where you’ve had some success with a group of guys, it tears you a little bit because there’s so many good memories.”

When asked after Game 5 if he was confident he would be the Capitals coach for next season, Reirden said it is part of the job and not something he thinks about every day.

“I am confident that I am a young coach that continues to improve and continues to get better and have been able to find success in the regular season and haven’t been able to find it in two completely different circumstances in the playoffs,” Reirden said. “And you know, I don’t have all of the answers right now and I think it is good to take some time away and look at it and dissect why it happened.”