They couldn’t be further from the truth lol. Their most reliable D is Dumoulin. Letang puts up big numbers but he has bigger and more frequent blunders than Carlson in his own end.
We’re very critical of our own players, but I’d be OK with laying most of the blame on Reirden. Our defense was horrendous in the Toronto bubble, way worse than what they are capable of.
I don't think the "insider reporting" about the Caps treating the bubble like a vacation was true, but one thing I did conclude silently (and before that report) was that the coaching (or players themselves) failed to keep them where they needed to be during the pause.
I felt like when the season paused the Caps treated it like the offseason had started, not like the season was on hold. A hungrier, more motivated (possibly better coached) team might have been able to treat that window like an opportunity to work and blow the doors off the bubble, and I'd speculate that teams like Tampa probably did. I don't think the Capitals entered the bubble to lose, but I don't think they treated the time
before that bubble very professionally. Whether that's a failing of Rierden or a byproduct of the split in the locker room (if it's true at all), it was my overall impression.
That's not based on much besides the observable amount of rust on the Capitals relative to some other teams, and how much they were able to shake off. All of them looking that bad as a unit is either coaching, conditioning, or both.