STANLEY CUP IN CAPS FUTURE?
October 30th, 2009 | by Scott Madore |
The Washington Capitals have never won a Stanley Cup in their franchise’s history. What’s intriguing is that they have never had a better chance at one than they do this season.
Their murderers row offense is reminiscent of the Pittsburgh Penguins of the early 90’s. Last season, the Capitals became the first team since the 1995-96 Pittsburgh Penguins (when the NHL was much higher scoring) to have all of their top four scorers average a point per game.
However, it is widely understood that scoring is far from the problem for the Capitals. The problem is preventing scoring. In order to have success in today’s NHL, teams need a strong performance from their goaltender on a consistent basis.
Goaltender Jose Theodore has been brilliant one night and porous the next thus far this season. This is exactly the reason why Theodore lost the starting job to unproven rookie Semyon Varlamov in the opening round of last year’s playoffs.
As expected, this season, Jose Theodore is battling Varlamov for the starting job. Theodore has been brilliant in back-to-back wins over the Islanders and Flyers and Varlamov is coming off an impressive 38/41 performance in a win over the Thrashers Thursday night. So the way it looks right now, the battle for No. 1 goaltending supremacy in Washington is a healthy one.
What the Capitals need is simply a goaltender that can keep them in games. That is their one single solitary key to Stanley Cup glory.
