Washington Capitals general manager Brian MacLellan held a pre-2024 NHL Draft press conference on Thursday afternoon just a day before the Caps are slated to pick 17th overall in the first round.
MacLellan addressed last week’s acquisition of center Pierre-Luc Dubois but made sure to add that he has further moves planned for his team’s roster. The entire league is in Vegas for the draft and the Capitals hold 11 draft selections in the first two rounds of the 2024 and 2025 drafts combined so moves could come fast and often this weekend.
“There’s opportunities that come up that those draft picks are currency, so it gives you more flexibility,” MacLellan said. “It gives us more flexibility to make transactions and acquire players.”
Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman reported last week that he believes the Capitals will be “very busy” the entire summer. MacLellan’s words on Thursday backed that assertion up.
“I think we’re still looking to do more,” MacLellan said. “Both in free agency and the trade market. Looking into a couple areas and hopefully, we’re going to be aggressive here and try and improve our roster.
“Both [at forward and on defense]. Looking at our defensive mix, wouldn’t mind changing that up a little bit and adding a forward also.”
MacLellan has long talked about wanting to add a top-six winger to his forward group and with Dubois’s addition, the team’s center depth is all of a sudden very crowded with likely five NHL players competing for just four spots in the regular lineup.
There is a long list of potentially available wingers this offseason which includes guys from free agency like Jake Guentzel who the Capitals have apparent interest in as well as names like Rutger McGroarty, Mitch Marner, Martin Necas, and Nikolaj Ehlers who could be moved in trades.
The team’s interest in a defender is new news though as the Capitals already have nine defenders with varying levels of NHL experience under contract for next season. Only three of those names, Rasmus Sandin, Martin Fehervary, and Alex Alexeyev, are primarily left-sided blueliners though so MacLellan may be trying to find the next Joel Edmundson for some veteran support on that side of his pairings moving forward.
Washington may also want to continue their recent trend of getting younger which could involve moving one of their more veteran defensemen like Nick Jensen or Trevor van Riemsdyk and replacing them with a younger, puck mover like they did with Sandin at the 2023 trade deadline.
Jakob Chychrun, a 26-year-old, left-handed defender that the Capitals have had rumored interest in previously, is expected to be made available by the Ottawa Senators. There are also other left-handed options in free agency like Brady Skjei, Matt Grzelcyk, and Oliver Ekman-Larsson.
The NHL announced in early June that they would be setting their salary cap at $88 million for the 2024-25 season, an increase of $4.5 million from the 2023-24 campaign. The jump is the highest single-season increase since 2018-19 and MacLellan says that has seriously opened up negotiations ahead of the draft.
“Quite a bit more flexibility,” MacLellan said. “We have a little bit of room, the cap went up and we have draft capital, so it makes it easier to make things happen.
“There seems to be discussions around moving picks for picks, moving up, moving back. A little more than usual on that part. And there’s trade discussions going on at the same time. I think teams with a little more cap flexibility now opens up your opportunities that make things happen for your roster.”
After the acquisition of Dubois, the Capitals are projected by CapFriendly to have $12.935 million in cap space. Nicklas Backstrom’s $9.2 million cap hit remains on LTIR and the team has an additional $3.735 million in room. However, that number could shoot up further depending on the status of TJ Oshie and his $5.75 million cap hit.
Over the coming weeks, the only internal moves Washington needs to make are re-signing restricted free agents like Connor McMichael and Beck Malenstyn.
