I know this will probably come off wrong and get some heat but in terms of offence I think our struggles stem from a lack of competent centre men. Both Nick & Kuz have been terrible so far this year and have provided almost zero support to OV, MOJO & Oshie who have had to shoulder the offence so far. I'm sure one of them will figure it out and start playing better probably Backstrom but I don't see us even getting out of the first round with Kuznetsov playing as bad as he currently is.
I wonder if that's true, or if the wingers are to blame. Last season Kuzy had consistently good wingers - particularly Bura and Williams. Bura has, again, forgotten how to score, and Williams is barely even 'there' right now. Ovi hasn't gotten going with Backstrom or Kuzy, whereas Mojo has been good regardless of center. And Oshie's only really looked good with Eller.
Orlov and Carlson seems to have been playing more with Ovi than Kuzy lately - they should change that up, as Orlov can be the fourth skater receiving Kuzy's passes.
What is increasingly clear is that we're missing at least one scoring winger - curiously in place of Williams, not Wilson as I'd expected.
I'm wondering if there's a plan to trade Winnik - he's a good, grinding, PKing pending UFA - shouldn't be that hard to package him away, exposing a good $2.25m cap hit. Throw in the spare cap space from sending Galiev down and the Caps have $2.5-2.75m spare (and obviously that money will have been banked a little). What I find curious is that they continue to alternate between Winnik, Connelly and Sanford, but Winnik is getting minimal PK time when he does play (Oshie has replaced him on PK1 with Beagle it seems). If Winnik isn't going to PK, his value to us has gone down significantly, and Trotz specifically mentioned it had been a good 'test' that they could 'PK by committee'. So, who could you get for that cap hit (and exchanged for Winnik + picks/prospects)?