Even though they have been eliminated, there’s still a decent among of news coming out of the Capitals’ camp today:

• Nicklas Backstrom was announced as one of the finalists for the Calder Trophy today. Not surprisingly, the other finalists were Chicago rookies Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews. Each has a knock on them: the two Blackhawks have the potential to cancel one another out and Backstrom suffers from the “anyone would have a good year playing with Ovechkin” attitude. I personally think Backstrom deserves the trophy because he has the best all-around game at this point. Kane is an offensive force, but is unpolished on defense and Toews is a very good defender and physical player, but he doesn’t have the offensive skill to make the kids of plays Kane and Backstrom can.
• Olaf Kolzig has taken his nameplate off his locker and skipped a mandatory team meeting. To me, this suggest Kolzig doesn’t consider himself a part of the team any longer. Guess it’s time to open those contract negotiations with Cristobal Huet and try and get him signed before the Capitals end up taking a chance on Ray Emery.
• The defense situation is starting to get complicated: Brian Pothier’s career may be finished and Steve Eminger is expected to get a qualifying offer. Hopefully Pothier does what’s best for himself and his family in the long term, even if it isn’t the best for his NHL career. As for Eminger, the Caps should bring him back. He’s better than John Erskine and is more consistent and has more offensive upside than Milan Jurcina. A defense corps of Mike Green, Tom Poti, Shaone Morrisonn, Steve Eminger and some combination of Jurcina, Karl Alzner and Sami Lepisto sounds pretty good to me (especially if the Capitals adress their need for a physical defense-first defenseman as well).
• The covert operations have ended for this season and the Caps have subsequently let the cat out of the bag on injuries. Per Tarik El-Bashir: “Boudreau said that defenseman Shaone Morrisonn played the past two weeks with broken jaw, which made it tough for him to eat. He also said Mike Green was hampered with hip pointer (suffered in Game 6) and a foot injury last game, and that Boyd Gordon had a torn hamstring in the playoffs. Boudreau also said Ovechkin was suffering from a nagging injury, which is why he didn’t practice for the last month of the regular season.”

Lastly, for now, I’ll leave you with this quote from Matt Bradley, which sums up how most Capitals fans are probably feeling today:

“It’s going to take a while for this to sink in. What we did this season was good, I guess, but we still could have gone a lot further in this.”