Washington Capitals general manager Chris Patrick spoke to the media on Friday afternoon, shortly after the NHL trade deadline.
The Capitals made five trades leading up to the league’s pencils down moment, with their deal sending John Carlson to the Anaheim Ducks, their biggest. Washington received two draft picks in return: a first-round pick in either 2026 or 2027, and a third-round pick in 2027.
“I think for us that first-round pick is potentially a really good pick, and we can use it to try to add something, or we can use it to get a good player,” Patrick said. “We weren’t going to [trade John] for just anything, for sure.”
Patrick added that talks with the Ducks “moved fairly quickly. We definitely had some back-and-forth. We had a couple different types of deals on the table depending on if they felt like they could talk to him to do an extension or not.”
But the deal also drew attention for reasons other than hockey. The trade was completed at midnight Friday morning, per Patrick, and was announced shortly after 1 am ET. While Carlson was aware, in broad terms, that the team was considering offers for him, he was not involved in the trade negotiations.
“I wasn’t totally naive to the fact that this was a possibility,” Carlson told ESPN’s Trade Deadline show, speaking about the deal for the first time. “I think that when it happens, it feels a lot different than when it’s speculated or when you’re thinking that it could be a possibility. Some tough moments with the family, but I’m looking forward to a new beginning and a great team and a great situation to be in.”
According to Patrick, the team ended extension talks — a source tells RMNB the parties were discussing a two-year deal — several weeks prior, with the Capitals sliding down the standings and other teams expressing interest in a trade. But they did not work with the franchise legend on the specifics of the trade, only considering, as is their right, the 10-team no-trade clause written into his expiring eight-year contract.
“I had a discussion with his agent and him probably two weeks ago, just with where we were in talking contract and where the team was, that we were just going to pause on it for a little bit,” Patrick explained. “And I just told him, like, look, we’re, I think at the time, we’re four points out of the playoffs. I said, teams are calling. I don’t know if something’s going to happen. I don’t necessarily want something to happen, but I also have to do my job. And if there’s an offer there that I think makes sense, then we’ll have to pursue it. So I think he knew, you know, he’s not naive to where he is in his contract status and where the team is. So that was kind of the extent of our conversations.”
The timing of the deal — Carlson was unaware he’d been traded until he woke up — wasn’t what anyone had hoped for, but Patrick feared that if they waited until the morning to finalize the trade, details would leak beforehand, leaving Carlson to learn he’d been traded via social media. Patrick ultimately decided that going forward with the deal that night was the lesser of two evils.
“One thing I do want to address is I think there’s some perception out there that we were disrespectful to John in the timing of the deal or how we told him,” Patrick said. “And I think it was actually we tried to approach it just the opposite. We tried to be as respectful as possible as we could. We respect John, and we didn’t want to do anything that we felt was disrespectful to him.
“You know, we had two options at midnight when the deal finally got agreed to, but hadn’t yet been processed by the league,” he continued. “Option one is wait till the morning, leaving 10 hours for a leak to get out, which happens with basically every deal on the trade deadline. And then John wakes up to a phone full of text messages and tweets and Instagram posts of a deal that he never heard from us about. Option two was push through last night and call John at 1 am, and if he doesn’t answer, leave a message and tell him to call me. And so that’s what we did. I left him a message… At no point were we trying to be disrespectful to John and how we communicated to him the deal. We were trying to do just the opposite. We were trying to be as respectful as possible.”
Ultimately Patrick had the conversation with Carlson around 6 am. The second-year general manager was adamant that they tried their best in a challenging situation to try and notify Carlson as soon as possible.
“It was sad. It was hard,” Patrick said, visibly teary-eyed. “He was upset, and so was I. But he’s a pro. I was expecting him to be angry, and he wasn’t angry. He understood. And I think he was just sad that it ended this way.”
While John did his best to keep his answers forward-focused in his conversation with ESPN, Carlson’s wife, Gina, thanked the DC hockey community for their support in an Instagram post while also admitting that “our hearts were broken” when first learning of the trade.
“It’s not a light thing moving across the country,” John added on ESPN. “I got a bunch of young kids with deep roots here, and certainly those guys that you talked about here, I’m seeing ‘Osh’ (TJ Oshie), obviously Tom (Wilson) and Ovi (Alex Ovechkin) are the three — and (Nicklas) Backstrom as well — that I’ve talked to today. Those are kind of the longest guys I’ve ever played with and have so many meaningful friendships with. I’ve seen players come and go a lot in my career, and when it’s you, it just feels so much different. I think it was an emotional day. I think it still is, going forward it will be, but that’s where we’re at. There’s no other path forward other than to say your goodbyes and go about your ways.”
