Continuing south down the lovely, traffic-congested I-95 corridor, we depart from Philadelphia (after tagging up the NYC area recapping the summers of the Devils, Rangers and Islanders) and head for Washington DC. The Capitals were a surprising division winner last season, their 111 points easily outpacing Carolina’s 99. The Caps took advantage of having the best record in the Eastern Conference to earn playing the worst playoff team in the first round, the Montreal Canadiens. Washington quickly dispatched Montreal in five games but then found themselves no match for the Hurricanes in the second round.
Additions: It’s been a very quiet summer for the DC hockey club. The Caps saw something they obviously like a lot in 23-year old Justin Sourdif, enough to send a second round pick for a player who has only four career NHL games under his belt. Add in a trade for depth defender Declan Chisholm and that’s it for external additions.
Losses: The Caps waved goodbye to Andrew Mangiapane in free agency after one fairly disappointing season in Washington. They also lost Lars Eller (Ottawa), Taylor Raddish (NY Rangers) and Alexander Alexeyev (Pittsburgh) to the free agent market, though without much hand-wringing in any of those cases.
Projected lineup (from nhl.com)
Alex Ovechkin — Dylan Strome — Anthony Beauvillier
Aliaksei Protas — Pierre-Luc Dubois — Tom Wilson
Sonny Milano — Connor McMichael — Ryan Leonard
Brandon Duhaime — Nic Dowd — Justin Sourdif
Rasmus Sandin / John Carlson
Jakob Chychrun /Trevor van Riemsdyk
Martin Fehervary / Matt Roy
Logan Thompson
Charlie Lindgren
After making several big swings last year — that all paid off— to bring in names like Dubois, Chychrun, Roy and Thompson, the Caps coasted this summer. They were able to re-sign Beauvillier, who looked good on any line he played on with the Caps. Chychrun too was re-signed ahead of free agency to keep the 20-goal blueliner in DC for the longterm.
A big point of emphasis for Washington will be the placement of McMichael. The 24-year old broke out with a 26-goal, 57-point season last year and can play in the top-six on the wing or center his own line. Washington is planning on trying him in the middle for a third line and hoping that he can stay productive and provide a depth option there— if not then they might need to add more center depth at some point.
On the back-end, the Caps will go as far as Carlson can take them. It’s no coincidence that the only time Washington has missed the playoffs in the last decade (2022-23), Carlson was injured for half the season and his absence was felt in a major way. Since then, he’s comeback strong with two 50+ point seasons and Washington has rolled on. Washington has merged the Ovechkin/Backstrom/Oshie era into a new one with younger players like Strome, Protas and Chychrun stepping in, and the next wave of Leonard, Ivan Miroshnichenko and Andrew Cristall not far from making their way up the ranks to join in. Carlson (and of course Ovechkin) have been the major bridges from the past success of the 2010’s merging into the present and future. Carlson tends to get lost in the shuffle some behind the major stars, but his presence and impact as a quality 1D can’t be understated.
What happens after the mission is complete? So much energy and effort was expended surrounding Alex Ovechkin’s chase for the goal record over the past few years but especially last season. That’s for good reason, historic records like that don’t fall very often! But now that Ovechkin has passed Gretzky, what happens after the finish line? Ovechkin scored 44 goals in 65 games, it’s not like he’s going to disappear but he had a dogged drive to set the record, seeing what happens now that it’s all gravy will be interesting.
Can Carbery buck the Jack Adams trends? Spencer Carbery has done a wonderful job as NHL coach, his first year in 2023-24 steadied the ship in the wake of Peter Laviolette’s departure and then last year Carbery won coach of the year with a 51 win, 111 point season. Most Jack Adams winners don’t tend to stay on top of the mountain once they get there with many cases of fading away and getting fired only a few years later. Carbery’s systems and base looks solid but he’s got a lot of work to do to keep the arrow pointing the way it is.
Potential OutcomesHere we paint some pictures of a semi-realistic best and worst case scenarios for the upcoming season..
Reasonable best case scenario — It looks a lot like last season, Ovechkin keeps filling the net and the supporting players are in lock step behind him. Charlie Lindgren bounces back from a soft season to provide good play as the 1B goalie and Thompson keeps his juju going. Washington competes for another division crown and is comfortably a playoff team.
Reasonable worst case scenario — There’s some shooting regression (Washington’s 10.6% 5v5 shooting percentage was tops in the league) and players who had career seasons last year like Strome, Protas, Dubois and McMichael aren’t as productive as they were. The third line becomes a major sore spot if Milano can’t rebound and Leonard isn’t an instant impact player and the forward group looks more “big and slow” than big and dangerous like last year. Thompson struggles and Washington has to fight tooth and nail to qualify for the playoffs.
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The Capitals look like they’re in a great spot. Their +56 goal differential last year was the second best in the East and they’re bringing back all nine players who recorded 30+ points last season, including seven 20+ goal scorers. Washington may not have a Stanley Cup winning ceiling on paper, but they should be somewhere in the mix as one of the quality teams in the league in what could be the swan song for the top goal scorer in NHL history taking a victory lap.
As a closing thought, for fit the Capitals would probably prefer to add a center but with just over $4 million in projected cap space, they look like they could add a Bryan Rust/Rickard Rakell type pretty nicely to round out their top six. (It would probably be too much for the Pens to hope about getting top prospect Cole Huston or Cristall in return, but one can dream and see players Miroshnichenko or Hendrix Lapierre as targets Pittsburgh might be interested in). Include Milano ($1.9m) back in the trade and the money would work.
As a further tangent, it will also be interesting with the playoff salary cap (which as a reminder is based only on the 20 players dressing for that game), does a team in this position this look to scratch an expensive $3.0 million backup goalie (Lindgren) for a cheaper option to give more playoff cap room? That would give even more flexibility for them to add more pieces, should that strategy be employed. It will be very interesting to see how contending/playoff teams adapt to the new rules in place and still look to cut as many corners as possible to maximize space on hand.