The Washington Capitals entered the offseason expecting to refresh an aging roster that had just put together the franchise’s worst full, 82-game season in 16 years. While there has been major change to the team’s coaching staff with new head coach Spencer Carbery, the team’s NHL roster has not had a serious upgrade or overhaul.
GM Brian MacLellan was upfront about his attempts to try and find a trade that would shake up his top-six forward group and how those attempts have not gone according plan despite being aggressive behind the scenes. “Nothing’s panned out,” he said in early July.
The only significant summer moves the Caps have made are trading draft picks for veteran defenseman Joel Edmundson, re-signing restricted free agents Martin Fehervary and Alex Alexeyev, and taking a risk on Max Pacioretty who is recovering from two achilles-tendon tears in less than a year.
The rest of their business has been focused on restocking the team’s minor league depth and taking a flier on talented tweener forward Matthew Phillips.
With little to no cap space and no major trade materializing, what could we expect the Caps to look like on October 13 against the Pittsburgh Penguins right now?
Capitals projected Opening Night roster
Alex Ovechkin – Evgeny Kuznetsov – Tom Wilson
Sonny Milano – Dylan Strome – TJ Oshie
Connor McMichael – Nicklas Backstrom – Anthony Mantha
Aliaksei Protas – Nic Dowd – Nicolas Aube-Kubel
Extras: Beck Malenstyn
Rasmus Sandin – John Carlson
Martin Fehervary – Nick Jensen
Joel Edmundson – Trevor van Riemsdyk
Extras: Alex Alexeyev
Darcy Kuemper
Charlie Lindgren
MacLellan signaled in the media earlier in the summer that the team intended to get younger this offseason. The Caps’ AHL affiliate won the Calder Cup with a roster featuring several names that will fight for NHL spots this fall.
“Next year we got some spots that we can use [younger] guys in,” MacLellan told Mike Vogel. “We’ll move forward from that. I think the experience of playing all the way through a [Calder Cup] championship has been tremendous for these guys. You watch the growth in the person and you watch all the fun they had. Having that success, winning the championship creates a bond for these guys going forward. All these young guys that have played together they come up and they create an energy within the NHL team of being successful, having that fun and they’re very close now so we hope to take advantage of it.
“It’s important to find a balance of making hopefully a change or two to the lineup but at the same time keeping a spot for these guys so that they can come in and earn whatever spot they end up in, in the lineup. There’s room for them to come in and play.”
Connor McMichael should be penciled in as the main youngster to grab one of those limited spots. McMichael started his sophomore NHL season with the Caps but played in just six games before seeing more of the press box than the ice. That led to an eventual demotion to the AHL where he tallied 39 points (16g, 23a) in 57 games.
McMichael will likely not see ice time at his natural center position as the Caps have Evgeny Kuznetsov, Dylan Strome, Nicklas Backstrom, and Nic Dowd pretty entrenched down the middle. McMichael played the vast majority of his rookie season on the wing and lost a training camp battle to Strome last year for a pivot spot but that was under Laviolette and not Carbery.
With Pacioretty likely to start the season on long-term injured reserve, the team would have enough cap space to include Aliaksei Protas, Connor McMichael, and Beck Malenstyn on their roster but unless further moves happen or a surprise start to the season on LTIR occurs for someone like Nicklas Backstrom, the Caps will only have room for 21 active players. Adding another contract, like Matthew Phillips’ $775k, would put them about $300k over the $83.5 million limit.
That lack of room leads to not a ton of preseason battles to look out for. Protas should be a lock and while we have McMichael and Malenstyn penciled in, they could be challenged by names like Phillips, Joe Snively, and Ethen Frank for those roster spots. It’s a similar story on the backend where the only possible question mark is on the left side of the third pairing. There, Alex Alexeyev will try to displace trade acquisition Joel Edmundson.
An AHL logjam
The inflexibility of the team’s NHL roster and the massive reload the organization has undertaken with the Hershey Bears, has created quite a logjam in Chocolatetown. As of publishing, the Bears have re-signed Jake Massie, Logan Day, Matthew Strome, Dylan McIlrath, Hunter Shepard, Julian Napravnik, Michael Kim, and Riley Sutter. Additionally, the Caps have added Phillips, Pierrick Dube, Alex Limoges, and Hardy Häman Aktell in free agency. Jimmy Huntington, Chase Priskie, and Garrett Roe have also signed AHL contracts.
Those large number of moves does not even include the fact that Caps prospects Ivan Miroshnichenko, Alexander Suzdalev, Bogdan Trineyev, and Ryan Hofer are all expected to play their first full pro seasons in North America next year.
That's a lot of dudes. I know some will be going to the ECHL or Caps, but still… that's a lot of dudes, especially at forward. pic.twitter.com/wUTviLTTjL
— Luke Adomanis (@LukeAdomanis) July 19, 2023
As things stand, several of those names are facing healthy scratch duty in Hershey or may even be assigned to the ECHL’s South Carolina Stingrays. The team could also consider loans to European teams but that would be yet another year outside of the organization for prospects that want to play in North America. In Suzdalev’s case, he could still return to the WHL’s Regina Pats for another season but it’s been reported that is not happening.
What are your thoughts on the work the Caps and Bears have done so far this summer? How do you think the two teams will look on Opening night?
Headline photo: Alan Dobbins/RMNB
