TORONTO \u2014 The retool on the fly that was the talk of the NHL last season, with the Washington Capitals surprisingly finishing first in the Eastern Conference, is still happening. It\u2019s just getting a little less national fanfare because of a tumble in the standings.<\/p>\n
But the NHL debut of Ilya Protas on Wednesday night was the latest bit of evidence of Washington\u2019s continuing roster renovation. Piece by piece, the youth movement is taking hold.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been fun for sure,\u201d Caps general manager Chris Patrick said Wednesday of seeing some of the organization\u2019s top prospects make the jump. \u201cI was joking with some people in the office, we\u2019ve had a couple of years now where we can\u2019t wait to see Ryan Leonard\u2019s first game, we can\u2019t wait to see Cole Hutson\u2019s, and now Ilya Protas\u2019. \u2018Oh, man, I feel like we\u2019ve opened all our presents and Christmas morning is over.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cBut they reminded me, we\u2019ve got a lot of other guys to also be excited about.\u201d<\/p>\n
Protas, 19, joins older brother Aliaksei Protas, 25, on the Caps. Both are 6 feet 6, both third-round draft picks five years apart \u2014 otherwise known as found money thanks to some impressive scouting work.<\/p>\n
Hutson\u2019s debut last month electrified the fans. Leonard\u2019s joining late last season was a blast.<\/p>\n
It was just three years ago the aging Capitals missed the playoffs and were sellers at the deadline. It seemed like the team was destined for a multiyear decline.<\/p>\n
Instead, while selling at that deadline, Washington also did some buying, acquiring defenseman Rasmus Sandin, then 22, from the Toronto Maple Leafs for the Boston Bruins\u2019 first-round draft pick that year (and Erik Gustafsson), a pick the Caps had acquired just five days earlier for Garnet Hathaway.<\/p>\n
From there, the Caps have continued to wheel and deal and draft, with the idea being to stay competitive in the here and now while developing the next generation to populate the roster as well.<\/p>\n
And now, it\u2019s the younger Protas, who had 28 goals and 62 points in 66 AHL games, joining the push, another key cog in Washington\u2019s turning things over.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m really excited about Ilya,\u201d Patrick said during a sit-down interview with The Athletic. \u201cThis is something we figured we\u2019d do at some point, maybe even earlier in the year, but it just never worked out roster-wise and timing-wise. He\u2019s certainly done everything he can possibly do in the AHL.\u201d<\/p>\n
All of which helps digest what has happened in the standings this season. The bigger picture remains on track, even if the Caps end up missing the postseason, which looks likely in a year in which the East playoff race was so competitive it was 12 teams deep.<\/p>\n
\u201cLike a lot of teams, you\u2019re always balancing the now and the future, and for us right now, we just happen to have a lot of the future pieces starting to get to that point where they\u2019re getting NHL-ready and time to get NHL reps,\u201d Patrick said. \u201cI mean, I was hoping we\u2019d be firmly in a playoff spot and these guys would be in as well. We\u2019re not out of it yet \u2014 we\u2019re still competing for it \u2014 so we\u2019ll see what we can do.\u201d<\/p>\n
There weren\u2019t that many people actually picking the Caps to finish first again. Part of that is the parity of the conference. Part of it is the natural regression that seemed inevitable for Washington. But most still viewed the Caps as a playoff team.<\/p>\n
\u201cGoing into the season, I felt like we had a good enough team to be firmly in those top three spots in the Metro Division, and at one point, we were first in the Metro,\u201d Patrick said.<\/p>\n
They were first in the division from Dec. 3 to 10, but never again. A busy January \u2014 16 games in 31 days \u2014 was compounded by already having Pierre-Luc Dubois out injured and joined on the shelf by Tom Wilson and the older Protas, which led to a 6-8-2 record in those 16 games.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was one of our top two lines last year, and we had all three out for an extended period,\u201d Patrick said. \u201cWe just couldn\u2019t string wins together. So we started stumbling in the standings a little bit.\u201d<\/p>\n
All of which led to a hugely difficult decision ahead of the March 6 trade deadline. The Caps were on the playoff bubble and decided to trade away pending unrestricted free agent defenseman John Carlson, a legacy player on the team.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was hard,\u201d Patrick said. \u201cEssentially, we\u2019re at a point where we have younger players coming in, and at some point, we have to hand the reins to those younger players. And that\u2019s not just the Cole Hutsons and Ryan Leonards, but even the guys like Aliaksei (Protas), Martin Fehervary \u2014 even Jakob Chychrun isn\u2019t an old guy.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was certainly discussion \u2014 do we do a deal in-season with John and extend him for a certain time frame and keep him with the Caps. Maybe if we were in a different spot in the standings, that would be something we\u2019d continue to look at. But given where we were and the fact we are in a transitioning era of the Caps here, we had to look at what was out there as a possible return for him.\u201d<\/p>\n
When the Anaheim Ducks stepped up with a first-round pick plus a third-round pick for Carlson, the Caps GM felt he had to take it.<\/p>\n
That didn\u2019t make it any easier to swallow for veterans on the team like Ovechkin or Wilson, and certainly not for the fans. But just like the Tampa Bay Lightning and their difficult decision to part ways with Steven Stamkos, some painful team decisions make sense in the bigger picture.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s part of the job that I have to do,\u201d Patrick said. \u201cThere\u2019s the here and now, but there\u2019s also the future. I\u2019ve got to be able to justify our trade deadline decisions to ownership and how that\u2019s impacted our team now and setting us up for the future. We just felt as a hockey operations group that it was a prudent decision to get those assets for John and hopefully use them to improve our team either this summer or in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n
Using those assets is absolutely the plan, if possible. It\u2019s been a priority for almost a year to upgrade up front with a scoring winger. The Caps came close but lost out to the Carolina Hurricanes in July on free agent Nikolaj Ehlers. They also went all in trying to trade for Artemi Panarin before the Olympics, but the Los Angeles Kings won out.<\/p>\n
This summer, given the state of the UFA class (although Alex Tuch would probably fit in perfectly if he goes to market), the trade route will be the avenue for Patrick.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m hoping there will be trades there this summer, but I also think teams that are maybe willing to move a top guy understand that it\u2019s a sellers\u2019 market, so the prices will be high,\u201d Patrick said. \u201cSo we had to put ourselves hopefully in a position to have as many different pieces that we can use to get somebody.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd if we don\u2019t trade the picks and use them instead, hopefully we have more prospects for our team or who can be used in future deals.\u201d<\/p>\n
Speaking of scoring wingers, the best one ever is still doing his thing at age 40. Alex Ovechkin leads Washington with 31 goals in what could be his last NHL season. No. 8 announced Wednesday that he was going to wait until the summer to make his decision on whether to retire.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have no sense of his intentions,\u201d Patrick said. \u201cOther than he\u2019s told us he wants to wait until the offseason to make his decision, which I totally get and respect. I really don\u2019t know. I don\u2019t know if he truly, honestly knows deep down yet what he wants to do.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll just continue to help him and support him in his decision-making process however we can. And whenever he\u2019s ready to tell us, we\u2019ll be ready to hear it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Caps are already on the lookout for a scoring winger. If Ovechkin does decide to retire this summer, that would become a double-whammy situation.<\/p>\n
\u201cI look at the offseason as a choose-your-own-adventure book,\u201d Patrick said. \u201cA scenario will come up in May, and then you\u2019re going to have to make your decisions based on that. And then another scenario comes up in June. So we\u2019ll just look at it that way. If he says to us, \u2018I\u2019m going to retire,\u2019 then we\u2019ll start making decisions based on that decision. And if he says he wants to come back, we\u2019ll make moves based on that. We\u2019ll take the path that presents itself to us.\u201d<\/p>\n
And finally, if the Caps do miss the playoffs, forget about any questions about coach Spencer Carbery\u2019s status. Last year\u2019s Jack Adams Award winner as NHL coach of the year didn\u2019t get dumb over 12 months. His job is not in question.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s 100 percent our coach now and in the future,\u201d Patrick said without hesitation. \u201cI just think he\u2019s the total package. He\u2019s come in and showed as a first-time coach in the NHL that he can get the respect of veteran guys and get them to play the system he wants them to play, and he\u2019s shown he can develop young players, too.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs long as we can have him, we will.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TORONTO \u2014 The retool on the fly that was the talk of the NHL last season, with the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":548661,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5114],"tags":[191,5,4,190,109,5222],"class_list":{"0":"post-548660","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-washington-capitals","8":"tag-capitals","9":"tag-hockey","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-washington","12":"tag-washington-capitals","13":"tag-washingtoncapitals"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116374371339127801","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548660","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=548660"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548660\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/548661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=548660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=548660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=548660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}