Washington Capitals owner Ted Leonsis really unloaded to Washington Times beat reporter Dave Fay in the wake of the team's 3-2 OT loss on Saturday to Florida:
"The issues are manifold," Leonsis said yesterday with customary bluntness. "We can't score goals, we can't stop goals, we aren't hitting, we can't play on special teams. No one should be pointing fingers at anyone on this team
I don’t think it is entirely true that you can’t trade unperforming players and its also not true that all of the players are underperforming. Konowulchuk was doing nothing for the Caps and they still got decent return for him and so they could for Kolzig and Bondra (IF they wanted to trade them, which I think they should). The way Lang is performing, he should be tradeable. That’s 15 million in payroll, minus whoever comes back in return. And there’s one or two players that could be traded if they were serious about making changes. I mean, if they are in full meltdown mode (and its pretty clear that they are) at the very least they shouldn’t do it with a $50 million payroll.