With the official start of winter just a week away, chimney smoke and snowflakes aren’t the only things in the air. The NHL rumor mill has been sparked up and it’s starting to sound like trades may be afoot.
According to The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Jackie Spiegel, 25 scouts from 19 different NHL teams were in attendance for Thursday night’s Capitals game in Philadelphia against the Flyers. On top of that, David Pagnotta of The Fourth Period is reporting that the Capitals sent a scout to check out the Columbus Blue Jackets play the Maple Leafs in Toronto.
While many of those scouts are likely in attendance just for the sake of pre scouts for games against the involved teams later in the season, recent rumors suggest there could be more, especially when it concerns the Capitals and Blue Jackets.
Just 10 days ago, Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman brought both teams up on an episode of the 32 Thoughts Podcast and said that the Capitals have been “around” the Blue Jackets in terms of scouting potential trade targets. Nothing else concrete has been reported since but it seems clear both teams are watching each other.
Just a couple of days before Friedman’s report, the Columbus Dispatch’s Brian Hedger revealed that the Blue Jackets had personnel at each and every stop of the Capitals’ recent, six-game western road trip. At the time, Columbus had a handful of forwards in the news.
Patrik Laine had just been a healthy scratch for a game and was not happy about it, Dmitri Voronkov was going through spells of homesickness and contemplating a return to Russia, and Yegor Chinakhov was on the verge of putting in a trade request.
All three players would fit, to varying degrees, Capitals general manager Brian MacLellan’s requirements for the young, top-six forward he has been searching for since this past offseason. Through two periods against Toronto, Laine has a goal and Chinakhov has a goal and an assist.
The Capitals took the ice on Thursday without Evgeny Kuznetsov who was mysteriously out with an illness for the third time already this season. Kuznetsov, notably, was a bastion of durability last year, one of just three Capitals skaters to play in more than 80 games. The Russian pivot was a recent healthy scratch and it is no secret that the Caps were looking for potential suitors for him via trade last summer.
Given that they have reportedly agreed to a two-year contract with defenseman Ethan Bear this week, the Capitals are showing that they are willing to tinker with their current roster. A trade to address a need that MacLellan has identified for some time now could be their next move.
Screenshot: @Capitals/X
