Capitals general manager Brian MacLellan said on Breakdown Day in May that the first offseason decision he wanted to make was in regard to the team’s goaltending situation. Both Ilya Samsonov and Vitek Vanecek are restricted free agents and will need qualifying offers from the team by July 11.

MacLellan stated on Wednesday that the two young netminders will get those offers but that the Caps still plan to explore both the trade and free agency market for a veteran alternative.

“Same situation. We’re talking. They’re both RFAs,” MacLellan said simply. “We’ll go through the RFA process. We’ll explore all opportunities as we would with any other position on the team and make decisions as we go here.”

Both goalies started the same amount of games in the regular season (39) and neither separated themselves as the full-time starter. Vanecek got the opportunity to start Game One in the playoffs against the Florida Panthers, but ultimately yielded the net to Samsonov in Game Two after a poor performance. Sammy was better in the postseason but sported career lows in save percentage (.896) and goals-against average (3.29) during the regular season. It’s a story the team has likely seen enough of.

“We’re going to explore,” MacLellan said back in May. “There’s a couple guys. I don’t know if it’s a deep free-agent market. We’ll talk to other teams and then we’ll evaluate. [Samsonov and Vanecek] have both been pretty good but not great.”

The NHL free-agent market isn’t exactly overflowing with quality names as the central available figures appear to be mainly Darcy Kuemper, Jack Campbell, Marc-Andre Fleury, and Braden Holtby. When it comes to acquiring a veteran via trade, many around the league expect the Anaheim Ducks are ready to move on from one-time Vezina hopeful John Gibson. The New York Islanders are also still tied to both Semyon Varlamov ($5 million) and Ilya Sorokin ($4 million) and could potentially jettison Varlamov in favor of opening up salary cap space after missing the playoffs. Sergei Bobrovsky is also being shopped by the Florida Panthers.

Whatever ends up happening, the Capitals seem committed to not turning to the Samsonov/Vanecek tandem for a third consecutive season. When asked Wednesday if the plan was to still look to acquire a veteran in net, MacLellan answered bluntly in the affirmative.

“Yeah definitely,” MacLellan said. “Like I said, we’ll explore trade opportunities there, we’ll look at the free-agent market, and then we’ll analyze the RFA contracts coming for both of them and make a decision based on all of that stuff.”