The Caps are two games away from the halfway point of the season and facing their toughest part of the schedule, with a gruelling five game road trip coming up and six away matches in the next eight.
It's a time when the veterans with experience at the top levels of the game really need to lead the side and play their part in helping the younger, more inexperienced players, get fully prepared for the long periods away from home and the gruelling toll travel can take both mentally and physically.
Then when it comes to the end of season run in, and hopefully the playoffs, they need to step up and do it all again.
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That's one of the reasons why the addition of Barry Robson, who has international experience with Scotland and Champions League experience with Celtic, will be a huge asset to the squad.
He's done the travel, he's had the pressure and he's won trophies, so we asked Martin Rennie what a player like that adds to the squad:
<i>"I think it brings it a lot. It increases the standard.
You saw what Y-P Lee brought with his international experience and his playing in the Champions League experience, and I think that Barry can bring something similar.
It's not that long ago that we introduced Y-P and a lot of people wondered how he would do and how he would settle, but we've seen just what he's brought to our team and I'm hopeful Barry can bring similar things."</i>
With Y-P Lee, Jay DeMerit and now Robson having played a lot of games at international level, along with the likes of veterans Joe Cannon and John Thorrington, there's a lot of experience at the top of the game in the squad right now.
What does having players like that bring to the Caps dressing room, especially to the younger guys, when you get into tough spells like what is coming up in July and what is sure to be a tense run in to the end of the season?
Who better to ask than one of them, Jay DeMerit:
<i>"Well hopefully it brings a calmness to the dressing room. When you've been there and done it before, you don't get over excited about things and you understand the situations and experiences that you're in.
I think when young guys sometimes get ahead of themselves and think that things are done or that they've gotten somewhere, older heads and experienced guys know that the fight's never over, so I think that's one of the things.
Also, just about keeping people in the right mindset and keeping the mentality strong, where if you do have a successful season and you do say make the playoffs, and everyone thinks that we've done our jobs and achieved our goals, then it's up to the leaders of this team to refocus and make sure we push on to the next level."</i>
A players' mental strength is important and with Martin Rennie big on the psychological side of football, the upcoming road trip is one where he will try to get this to come fully into play.
With the start of the five away games coming up on Saturday, how does Martin Rennie prepare the team mentally for such a period?
<i>"The first thing is we just look at the first game because that's the last game in June and then we have a break for a little while.
Then we'll probably look at the next four games as a block and set some goals for that and some targets and get our head round it, but I think right now we're just focussed on this one game and we know we have a little rest, a few days off and a chance to get back at it.
And last time we had a break we came back really well from it, so hopefully we can finish this little run and come back well for the game against Colorado."</i>
It's going to be tough, but if the Caps can come out of this spell in good shape, it will be a huge boost to their playoff hopes, with only Western Conference battles to come.
And who knows? We may even have more international experience to help us on the way.
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