Days away from the trade deadline, more Washington Capitals players are showing up in trade rumors. This comes after general manager Brian MacLellan made it clear in a press conference on Saturday that the team would like to make some moves.
The latest Capitals player to have their name pop up in legitimate reporting is fourth-line winger Beck Malenstyn. Hockey insider Elliotte Friedman brought up Malenstyn’s name in the latest episode of 32 Thoughts: The Podcast where Friedman and Jeff Marek preview the deadline for all four NHL divisions.
“Another name that people have mentioned to me was Beck Malenstyn who has 16 points this year in 58 games,” Friedman said. “He’s making $762k. A couple of people told me not to be surprised if teams have poked around him as well.”
This season has been Malenstyn’s first full campaign in the NHL after being drafted by the Capitals in the fifth round of the 2016 NHL Draft. Malenstyn did play nine games with the Capitals last season but spent most of that campaign in the AHL with the Hershey Bears.
The Bears ended up taking home the Calder Cup at the end of that run and Malenstyn was a massive reason why. The 26-year-old winger combined on a checking line with Riley Sutter and Mason Morelli that was Hershey’s most consistent trio throughout the entire postseason. Malenstyn ended up with eight points (4g, 4a) in 20 postseason outings.
With the Capitals this season under Spencer Carbery, his former head coach in Hershey, Malenstyn has been deployed primarily as a defensive specialist on a line with Nic Dowd and Nicolas Aube-Kubel. There is not a single player on the Capitals that has more defensive-zone starts at five-on-five than Malenstyn (232) and the team still has a positive goal differential in his minutes (25-22).
Malenstyn has been incredibly durable this season, missing just one game due to the birth of his first child. He is also one of the league’s top penalty killers, skating the fifth-most minutes per game down a man among all NHL forwards (2:46).
The British Columbia native is a restricted free agent at the end of this season. The Capitals last signed him to a two-year extension in June of 2022.
