The Washington Capitals are a team in transition now more than ever after the 2026 NHL Trade Deadline saw two staples of the organization moved for future assets. The Caps dealt franchise legend John Carlson to the Anaheim Ducks and long-time stalwart center Nic Dowd to the Vegas Golden Knights for four total draft picks.
In doing so, the Capitals are left with just two players from their 2018 Stanley Cup championship roster: Alex Ovechkin and Tom Wilson. Naturally, with the two big trades and Ovechkin’s future past this season uncertain, Caps general manager Chris Patrick fielded big-picture questions about the direction he and the front office are taking the franchise.
“I think, look, [Carlson and Dowd are] great players, and they’re going to do great where they’ve gone, but, at the end of the day, they’re in their mid-30s,” Patrick said Friday. “Our team is starting to have some younger guys step up, and at some point, you need to pass the torch a little bit. This allowed us to get some good assets for some players that, realistically, in four years from now, probably aren’t on our team, and we can use those assets to improve what we have here now.”
The Capitals have sold off players at recent deadlines, but the vast majority have been peripheral players with short-term ties to the team, players not expected to stay for the long haul. Neither of the Capitals’ big trades last week fit that mold. Carlson, a 17-year veteran, had played nowhere but with the Caps and seemed likely to finish his career with the club. Dowd, who played eight seasons with Washington, signed a two-year contract extension just last year.
Given the new ground that Patrick and his staff seem to be breaking with their moves this time around, the second-year GM was asked if he had any words for Capitals fans who have near-constant high expectations for the team. The Caps have missed the playoffs just four times in the Ovechkin era.
“The message to the fans is, our goal here is to have a playoff-caliber, Stanley Cup-caliber team every year,” Patrick said. “That’s what we try to do. Will we have one every year? No. But our goal is to put the best team on the ice every year that we possibly can. So, we have to make our decisions based on that.
“Sometimes it’s a lot of fun because you’re sending first-round picks out for the hot commodity on the market, and sometimes it’s brutal because you have to trade guys that are a huge part of your organization to get some assets to be able to do that again in two years. The last couple of days were some of those brutal days.”
The Capitals now have three first-round picks over the next two drafts, two third-round picks in the 2027 draft, and two second-round picks in the 2029 draft. All of that draft capital, in a perfect world, won’t remain with the Caps for too long, as Patrick emphasized the team will continue looking to add “good players” over the offseason.
The Capitals will have plenty of cap space to do so, with the team, per PuckPedia, currently projected to have $36.6 million in room for next year. Only six teams in the NHL are slated to have more.
“Yeah, I mean, we need to add good players,” Patrick said. “A lot of good players signed with their teams this year. The free agent market is already thin for the summer. So, you’re going to have to do it another way, and that’s having capital to trade – if that’s prospects, if that’s picks. Now we have the picks to be flexible to do something like that if something comes up. I don’t know if anything’s going to come up, but to be where we want to be next year, we need to try to add good players this summer, and picks will help us do that.”
The Capitals seemingly tried to do what Patrick outlines a few times during this season, most notably with Quinn Hughes and Artemi Panarin, but were unsuccessful.
While the team has not necessarily given up on this season, adding two pieces, Timothy Liljegren and David Kampf, to try to partially fill the big holes left by Carlson and Dowd, it’s clear that more focus is already being placed on next season and the following campaigns after that.
“I think just by nature of the deals, we only have two players left from the Cup team now, and that’s not uncommon,” Patrick said. “It’s how this league works. You look at a team, and then you look at that same team four years later, and the amount of the same players on that team, it’s crazy how few there are.
“Yeah, you could say it’s kind of a turnover to a different group or a younger group, but to me it’s more just the continual evolution of the team, and this year it was just a couple of really quality players and humans were going out, and we’ll move forward with what we got.”
As things presently stand, the Capitals are seven points back of the Pittsburgh Penguins for third in the Metropolitan Division, and the Penguins have two games in hand; the Capitals are six points back of the Bruins for the second wild card playoff spot, and the Bruins have two games in hand.
With their most recent loss to Boston, the value of their first-round pick went up. According to Tankathon, the Capitals now have the 12th-best odds at winning the 2026 NHL Draft Lottery, which would move them up the maximum of 10 spots to second overall.
