Water Softener Leak

OK, heres the situation. Our water softener that we havent used in 15 years started leaking. The bypass valve was never closed for some reason so I thought by closing it, that would stop the leaking. Turns out that the bypass valve wont fully close, and there is still a slow leak. So now I'm looking into just tearing out the softener. I was going to get 2 sharkbite 90 degree couplings and a connecter and do it that way. My question is if I could skip doing that and just get 2 sharkbite end caps, and cap off each pipe seperately? Or do I need to connect both the incoming and outgoing pipes. Thanks in advance for any help.