No matter what, the Capitals have shown few weaknesses this season

Following Thursday’s victory over the Metropolitan Division rival Philadelphia Flyers, the Washington Capitals became the first team to punch their ticket to the 2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs.

On Friday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, Frank Seravalli and Tyler Yaremchuk discussed how the Capitals must now be ready to respond to adversity as the postseason nears.

Tyler Yaremchuk: The Capitals became not only the first club to hit the 100-point mark this season, but they also became the first and only team with an ‘X’ next to their name in the standings. The Capitals are going to the postseason. Let’s start with last night’s game. That’s three wins in a row. With this team in January, I was going, ‘Are they going to sputter at any point here?’ This team is outperforming expectations and what they’ve done is just continually outperformed those expectations. There was no blip for them this season.

Frank Seravalli: No, and I think back to a quote from Spencer Carbery, sometime in January when he said, ‘Are we going to be known as a team that got off to a hot start and fell apart or are we going to pick up again?’ I think they had a stretch where they were like 5-3-2 in a 10-game run and he read them the riot act and said basically, ‘It’s up to you guys to determine what kind of team you want to be.’ From then on, they just took off again. I think perspective is important here. The Capitals last year on the last day of the season were the last team to clinch a playoff spot. This year, they’re the first team, and the first team to 100 points. It’s been a remarkable turnaround. You see their goals per game. Their offense just clicks. They score. They have seemingly six guys who are having career years. And you’re right, they haven’t sweat. The other part of that is when they get to the Stanley Cup Playoffs and they get punched in the face for the first time, that’s also going to be their real first test of adversity. The big thing will be, between now and then, will Alex Ovechkin have knocked off Wayne Gretzky on the all-time scoring list? I also think that has something to do with the psyche of this team heading into the postseason. It’s something that they’ve had to talk about and answer and think about a lot. As Ovechkin got to 888 last night and is now seven away from breaking the record, how does this team respond if and when he does?

You can watch the full segment and the rest of the episode here: