The Capitals’ struggles are making their playoff chances slimmer

This year’s NHL, and especially the Eastern Conference, is not very forgiving to a poor stretch of play. Take, for example, the Washington Capitals. Earlier in the season, the Caps were hovering near the top of the Metropolitan Division standings, and getting career years from the likes of goaltender Logan Thompson and defenseman Jakob Chychrun.

In their last 10 games, however, Washington has gone 3-6-1, plummeting them in the standings of the tightly contested Eastern Conference. Despite having the conference’s sixth best goal differential at plus-11, the Capitals’ 57 points through 53 games has them five points back of the second wild card spot. The good news for Washington is they’re not in the Atlantic Division, as they’re just two points back of third place and a playoff spot in the scuffling Metropolitan.

On Monday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, hosts Tyler Yaremchuk and Steve Peters discussed just how concerned Capitals fans should be about the teams’ recent struggles.

Steve Peters: A season ago, this team had 77 points at this points in the season. They were first in the Metro. They’re 20 points behind that pace, and that is a huge problem for this team. I think this team overshot last season, we talked about (Aliaksei) Protus and (Connor) McMichael having a better season than expected. We tallked about the (Alex) Ovechkin chase, and I think that probably brought some offensive upside, as everyone was trying to get Ovi those goals.

This team is 10th in goals against per game in the entire league, and they’re still losing games. I am very concerned. I don’t know if one or two players makes enough of a change for the Washington Capitals. The only injury they really have is Pierre-Luc Dubois, so they’re going to have to shuffle up this roster.

You can catch the full discussion and the rest of Monday’s episode here…