How the Washington Capitals DOMINATED the First Day of Free Agency
you know Lloyd just when I think you couldn’t possibly be any Dumber you go and do something like this and totally redeem yourself the NHL’s free agency period is off and running and teams have already spent a combined $1 billion dollars on free agency just a day into the market being open but I’m going to focus on only one of those teams and how they have spent their money to start this free agency period and that’s my Washington Capitals looking at the players that they signed the players that they let go and the players that they brought in Via trade and let’s start with that because I thought the Caps were going to be relatively quiet in free agency they didn’t have a ton of cap space and they had some pretty bad contracts to move and they did that right off the bat trading away Nick Jensen to the Ottawa Senators in exchange for Jacob chitan and to me this is an absolute home Runner of a trade for the Caps they unloaded Nick Jensen’s terrible contract even though he’s not making a ton of money he still has a cap hit of $4 million for another 2 years and he was awful last year he had the for all defenseman who played at least 200 minutes last year Nick Jensen’s cory4 ranked 13th worst he was behind such notable defenseman as Mark Edward vasic Matt Dumba Travis hamik and Eric Johnson last year and yes that was down from the year before where he had a Coursey 4 of 44% but that was still bottom 100 of all defenseman in fact Nick jens’s highest career cory4 was in 2016 we had a 47% on Ice Cory 4 compare that to the guy that they’re getting Jacob chitron 47% on Ice Cory 4 would be his second Worst season ever his 2021 year with the Arizona Coyotes last year he had a 55% Cory 4 on a terrible Ottawa team so to pay the price of only giving up an extra third round pick to make the swap of those two contracts when chitan is making 600 Grand more this year even if it is just a one-year rental this is an incredible trade for the caps but Brian mlea was not done there at revamping the defense he went out and spent big on perhaps the best defensive value in the entire free agency market signing defenseman Matt Roy from the LA Kings to a 6-year 34.5 million deal Roy is an analytics darling even though his corsy 4 last year was only 47% he is 29 and so this contract is going to take him into his 30 so that’s a little worrying to me but Roy is an elite penalty killer he’s a puck moving defenseman who is still very responsible in his Own Zone so I really like this move for the caps and while those were two of the big sexy moves for the caps and free agency let’s not forget that they also resigned Conor McMichael to a 2-year $4.2 million deal that’s 2.1 aav I think that’s a very fair Bridge deal for Conor McMichael and as somebody pointed out on Twitter that that two-year term means that his contract will end one year before he enters UFA status so the Caps can qualify him again and teams will be a bit dissuaded from signing him when this contract comes up for renewal in a couple years the Caps also also added Taylor radish from the Chicago Blackhawks for one year $1 million the epitome of a low-risk high reward play radish actually scored 20 goals a couple of years ago and had a really bad year on a bad Blackhawks team last year he’s a pure bottom six player he can kill penalties and any offense he adds as a bonus so think of it this way we basically swapped him for Beck manstein and got Cole Hudson to boot finally the last signing of day one was inking Brandon D ham to a 2year $3.7 million deal uh for a fourth liner like toim this is a little Rich for my blood especially for what duim is but he’s getting a little bit more money and oneyear extra term than Nick OB kubel signed for in Buffalo and I think they’re basically the same quality of player he’s the kind of guy that honestly I would prefer that they save their money and just see if somebody from Hershey can do the job along with daer and scaros on the fourth line not the end of the world but this is an area where maybe you could save a little bit of money but overall I like all of these signings to some degree for the caps and the trade was a master class the only thing that’s left outstanding is who has to get moved in order to clear some cap space they are currently $12 million over the cap with $100 million in cap space used of course that’s going to go down this year with Nick Backstrom probably not playing and TJ ooshi is probably going on the LTI as well at least that was what was signaled by the Maji aani trade but they still have to clear about $5 million worth of cap space to be compliant and two guys I’m looking at Square in the eyes are Ethan bear and San rdik between the two of them that’s $5 million a year and the Caps have done a lot to augment their defensive core you could potentially have a top four of Carlson Roy chitron and sandine with a bottom pair of like farari and Alexi ever Johansson I think that would be perfectly serviceable but all in all Brian mclan shocked me with his aggressiveness on day one of free agency and the only thing I’d really want them to do for the rest of the offseason is maybe add a little bit more scoring depth but honestly if guys like laier mesenko and McMichael continue to develop we can get that in Spades for pretty cheap
The Capitals added an incredible defenseman in free agency and another via trade, but how did their other moves pan out?
Follow me on Twitter @ R1nkR4t
2 comments
As a fellow caps fan, it's ridiculous how different this Free Agency has been played by GMBM. That Vegas room must have worked, he's been absolutely smoking the market. A+ off season for the Caps even if he makes no more moves.
Looked into the cap stuff earlier. They just assigned Backstrom to "offseason LTIR," apparently, meaning Caps are under the 10% cushion. A doctor verifies he won't play for at least 10 games/24 days from when season starts and you get offseason cap relief. When season starts, both can formally hit LTIR, and no moves will actually be required.