A short nine months ago we took an EKG of the Caps’ organization, and it felt closer to flatline than to pulsing. Todd Reirden was three games away from his eventual ousting, the on-ice product was visibly incoherent even to the untrained eye, the roster was old, the contracts expensive, and even the power-play, vaunted for so many years, was languishing. Fast forward to May 2020, the tail end of the 2021 NHL regular season, and it looks like maybe the Caps were just working through a spot of arrythmia.
The totality of evidence suggests that first-year bench boss Peter Laviolette, who was ostensibly brought in to instill the structure, discipline, accountability (and any other characteristics that might be a symptom of a good coaching staff) that was missing, has succeeded.