Like the Capitals, the Nationals’ problem is not so much that they can’t win a championship; it’s that they can’t even get in a position to play for one.

Like Ovechkin, Max Scherzer, the Nationals’ star pitcher, struggled to come up with a reason.

“I really don’t think there’s anything psychological about it, nothing deep in our minds that’s keeping us from winning,” Scherzer said this month. “Sometimes, that’s just the way certain things happen.”

Scherzer, who won a Cy Young Award last season but neither of his postseason starts, cited Jordan Spieth’s meltdown at the 2016 Masters as an example of a phenomenal athlete who just has a bad day.

“It happens,” he said. “That’s sports.”

In Washington, it feels like more than that. The window for the Capitals and the Nationals to win a championship will not last forever. In fact, it may not stay open that much longer.

For the Nationals, the slugger Bryce Harper’s contract runs through 2018, at which point he becomes an immensely expensive free agent. For the Capitals, the current team is the most talented one the franchise has had in years, but Ovechkin is graying and past his prime, and the core of the team — the standout players like Oshie and Nicklas Backstrom and the young stars like Evgeny Kuznetsov and Andre Burakovsky — isn’t likely to return intact.

Eleven players will be either restricted or unrestricted free agents. Not all of them will be back.

Time also was up on Wednesday for Michael McNealy, who has worked security behind the Capitals’ bench and been assigned to Capitals games for 36 years, all the way back to when the team played in a Maryland suburb.