Acquired from the Maple Leafs early last season, the Sharks have given Liljegren the longest leash of his career. A first-round pick by Toronto in 2017, he was never able to break into a top-four role there but is now averaging over 20 minutes per game in San Jose. Given how much he\u2019s produced at lower levels, the Sharks were likely hoping for a bit more production than the seven goals and 28 points he provided in 110 games since October 2024.<\/p>\n Liljegren didn\u2019t get much power-play time, though, especially this season, with Dmitry Orlov<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0John Klingberg<\/a>\u00a0taking up those quarterback slots. With Klingberg being a potential extension candidate given his play and youngsters\u00a0Shakir Mukhamadullin<\/a> and\u00a0Sam Dickinson<\/a>\u00a0pushing for more ice time moving forward, the 26-year-old Liljegren didn\u2019t look like a long-term fit.<\/p>\n The move is a sign the Caps aren\u2019t entirely punting on this season, even after trading away franchise defender\u00a0John Carlson<\/a>\u00a0and center\u00a0Nic Dowd<\/a>\u00a0for futures in the last couple of days. Washington\u2019s playoff odds have slipped to a small but still tangible 21.3%, per MoneyPuck<\/a>. They only find themselves four points out of a spot.<\/p>\n Liljegren could stick around past this season if there\u2019s mutual interest in an extension. Matt Roy<\/a>\u00a0is now the only everyday NHL right-shot they have signed for next year, so assuming they shift one of their lefties over to their offside to make room for top prospect\u00a0Cole Hutson<\/a> to join the team from college in the coming days, as expected, there\u2019s a hole that Liljegren fills in the Caps\u2019 bottom four.<\/p>\n Image courtesy of Stephen R. Sylvanie-Imagn Images.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"2:52 p.m.:\u00a0Washington has announced the deal and sent the Golden Knights\u2019 2026 fourth-round pick the other way to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":491775,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[5,4,168,5897,405,109],"class_list":{"0":"post-491774","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-nhl","10":"tag-san-jose-sharks","11":"tag-timothy-liljegren","12":"tag-transactions","13":"tag-washington-capitals"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116189502139544641","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=491774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491774\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/491775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=491774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=491774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=491774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/USATSI_27707040-200x300.jpg\")
<\/a>While San Jose is in a playoff race of their own, they have a bevy of pending unrestricted free agent blue-liners. Liljegren is one of them, and they were widely expected to ship multiple names from that group out today to continue recouping at least mid-level assets as they slowly emerge from the ashes of their rebuild.<\/p>\n