So I’m trying to figure out if the 2018-19 Capitals will be better than the 2017-18 Capitals (apart from the whole championship thing). I started by looking at the lineup from the last game of last season and compare it to my best guess at the lineup for the first game next season. So here’s the lineup on June 7, when the Caps beat the Knights to win the Cup:
Ovechkin – Kuznetsov – Wilson
Vrana – Backstrom – Oshie
Burakovsky – Eller – Connolly
Stephenson – Beagle – DSP
Kempny – Carlson
Orlov – Niskanen
Orpik – Djoos
Holtby
And here’s my projected lineup for opening night:
Ovechkin – Kuznetsov – Wilson
Vrana – Backstrom – Oshie
Burakovsky – Eller – Connolly
Stephenson – TBD – DSP
Kempny – Carlson
Orlov – Niskanen
Orpik – Djoos
Holtby
Just one change. This isn’t going to be a long article.
The only immediately impactful exit is Jay Beagle, a fourth line center. Seventeen skaters and the starting goalie return, albeit each one year older and closer to death. Regardless, that’s a stunning “keep the band together” effort from the Caps front office, and it helped the team out in a subtle way that I’ll talk more about in our next installment.
Before I go player by player, let’s take a look at the wins-above-replacement numbers for each 2017-18 Caps player — with the exits (and one near-exit) highlighted. This data is from Corsica and visualized by Sean Tierney.
By this metric, none of the players who left had a positive impact on the team’s ability to win games compared to a replacement-level player. One could argue that it was Jay Beagle’s role and usage that did not drive wins rather than the player himself, but Chorney (dumped midseason) and Chiasson (a fourth-liner lost to free agency) were clearly marginal players. And the team’s ostensibly worst non-Orpik defenseman, Madison Bowey, will likely fill a 7D role next season, so his impact may be lowered just by less play.
Orpik himself is another matter, and we’ll discuss that in the next part of this series, but the pattern is clear: the Caps didn’t lose valuable players this summer. With one big exception, whom we should addressed first.
Goalie Philipp Grubauer traded to Colorado
Grubauer played 35 games with a .923 all-situation save percentage, saving more goals above average (16.3 during 5-on-5 play) than anyone outside of Columbus’ Sergei Bobrovsky. He’s a great player, but a confluence of factors made a trade inevitable:
- Grubauer’s elite performance over the last two seasons
- Grubauer’s expired two-year RFA contract, which was worth $1.5M last season
- Washington’s strong goalie prospects, especially Ilya Samsonov, who signed an ELC this spring
- Washington’s need to vent the final year of Brooks Orpik’s $5.5M contract
Grubauer was just too good to be just a backup goalie, and the Caps will have options to fill that role soon. So Brian MacLellan dealt Grubauer’s rights to Colorado in exchange for taking on (and buying out) the Orpik contract. Rather than use the deal to get a player in return, MacLellan addressed (temporarily) the single most glaring problem on the 2018-19 roster.
So now Grubauer gets to duel another ex Cap, Semyon Varlamov, for the starting spot out west. He’ll win that duel, which might be added comfort for the Caps, who made the best of a sad situation and will see their studly backup goalie become a star …in another conference.
Grade: B+
Depth forward Jay Beagle to free agency
Beagle is a fan favorite, so this part won’t go over well: Jay Beagle was bad.
None of the top 400 forwards saw his team’s shot-attempt percentage fall more during his shifts than Beagle (from 50 percent to 39 percent), and only one-fifth of them saw his team’s goals percentage fall more (from 54 percent to 45 percent despite better-than-average on-ice shooting and saving). Those are abjectly terrible results, even worse than what we might expect from a faceoff specialist who was used more defensively than nearly any forward in the league (just 26 percent of his non-neutral faceoffs were in the offensive zone).
So Beagle was used poorly and did even more poorly. Trotz appeared to use Beagle as a crutch in face-off/get-off situations with his top six. With both of them gone, that usage is now impossible, which means whoever the fourth-line center is (Boyd? Dowd?) will have a much cushier gig. Further, by letting Beagle go without a new deal, the team cleared the path for him to get well paid. Vancouver will shell out $3M annually to Beagle for the next four years, an absurd deal that Beagle is unlikely to play fully. That’s a win for the Caps, a win for Beagle, and win for anyone who likes to see the Canucks miserable. Win-win-win.
Grade: A
Depth forward Alex Chiasson and depth defenseman Jakub Jerabek to free agency
Chiasson and Jerabek are both serviceable players in small roles, but they just weren’t used much. Chiasson played 61 games (and racked up an impressive 9 goals and 9 assists), but he played the fewest minutes among all full-time Capitals (11.7 per game). I suspect he could provide value above replacement level in his next deal, but the Caps are flush with depth fowards right now. There would be no justification for signing a free-agent deal with a Championship premium for a player that could be replaced for almost nothing.
A similar story for Jakub Jerabek, who played just 11 games after joining the team in February, recording the least average ice time among all non-Chorney-tier defensemen. Jerabek was fine, but he didn’t move needle much. Compared to Michael Kempny, who was added at the same time and found a groove late in the regular season, Jerabek had a hard time cracking the lineup. With Djoos blossoming and Bowey possibly having a better sophomore year, the Caps had no need to extend Jerabek a new deal.
Grade: B+
Veteran defenseman Brooks Orpik to Colora– waitaminute nevermind
Welp, I’ll get to this one later.
Next: Additions and extensions
