I believe part of the problem was force feeding Ovechkin to help him chase the 700-goal mark. Lets hope the team is more collective in their effort moving forward now that Ovi hit 700.
Serious question: I can understand to a certain extent Ovi's teammates trying to get him to 700... there are lots of stories involving pretty much every team of teammates trying extra hard to get a teammate to a milestone, even at the expense of their own [personal] numbers.
That being said - if the Caps' desire to get Ovi to 700 was materially affecting the team's play to the point that they were scoring less, and maybe even losing games they would have won otherwise - where was the coaching staff in all of this? Shouldn't they have stepped in and said, "Ok guys, we all want Ovi to get to 700, but we need to win some games here?"
I guess what I'm saying is... Since I don't really believe an NHL coaching staff would allow such a mindset to cost their team wins, I'm having a bit of a hard time believing this as a reason the team hasn't been playing as well lately.