What Happened To The Caps?

So am I hearing this correctly?  The Caps have a worse win % this season under Dale Hunter than they did with Bruce Boudreau?  Sure, some of it has to do with Nick Backstrom being out, but like with Boudreau lots of it has to do with the management making 0 trades to shake things up.  Clearly the coach wasn't the whole problem.  Anyways, I hear the trade deadline is coming up soon, so let's see what happens.

Speaking of Boudreau the Ducks have won 6 of 10 and are not the worst team in the league. As a DC Sports fan I am good at looking at terrible teams and grasping for playoffs.  So when I look at the NHL standings I don't see a 2nd to last place Ducks team, I see a team only 12 points out of the playoffs and 12 points behind the Caps.

And looking at the Caps again it appears they are the 9th seed and would be out of the playoffs if they started today.  However, if they win tomorrow they will be back in the playoffs and in 1st place in their division.  Crazyness.

Alex Ovechkin needs to step up too.  He is already 2nd in points to a guy who has played 10 less games and is about to be passed by a random defender.  The RW position seems to be useless.  Can someone please comment and tell me what exactly Joel Ward does here?  Same question for Knuble, he has a -14 and doesn't seem to do much but collect silver hockey sticks.  Brouwer is ranked 42 in scoring for that position and there aren't 42 teams in the league.

Good talk!  See you out there!