I can't see us being anything more than a wildcard team this year, just as I predicted after the offseason. We've lost way to much talent over the last few years for basically nothing (Forsberg, Ward, Green, MP85, MoJo, Alzner, Williams, Schmidt, Carrick, etc.) and we were due for some big injuries this year after a relatively healthy 16-17.
We can't just gloss over those personel losses and assume what we had in the pipeline will carry us out of the mess this organization put itself in. Most of the other teams in East haven't botched their player management over the last few years and the Caps have. Now we're seeing those mistakes finally creep into reality.
We have no scoring depth and half our defencemen are figuring out how to settle into the NHL.
IMO, the only thing that can get us to being respectable this year are breakouts from Bura and Vrana. Regardless, the defence will barely survive all season.