When your alumni game features less than one former player for each year your franchise has played, and none of them play goalie, something might be wrong. The 2006-2007 season was a chance for the Washington Capitals to take a long, sometimes painful look at the prospects it has drafted and traded for in recent years. Over the season, the team discovered that these young players were generally young, inexperienced and insecure. With the right coaching, though, they were able to lose when they had to.

After Saturday’s sold out shutout loss to Buffalo, the Caps fell back to 27th place in the 30 team NHL. This gives them a chance to pick first, fourth or fifth in the NHL’s draft lottery. The drawing is tomorrow at noon. We’d like to begin a two part series examining some of the brilliant ways they reached this lofty achievement. For today, we’ll focus on the Capitals’ treatment of Alexander Semin, free agent acquisition strategy, and goaltending evaluation.

The Old Switcheroo
When the Capitals began the 2006-07 season with an even record due to the success of then-league-leading scorer Alexander Semin, the organization had to ask itself some important questions. First: how big of a contract would Semin demand when he became a free agent in the summer of 2008? Second: could they build for the future around a player they had already sued? Third: if Semin led the league in scoring, would the Caps get full value out of all the publicity they had invested in Alex Ovechkin?

Photograph of Caps alumni game by Eli Resnick