The Washington Capitals have had a very interesting offseason. After being knocked out of the playoffs once again by the Pittsburgh Penguins, they’ve seen wholesale changes to their team structure and will head into 2017-18 with a much different look. Out went Justin Williams, Kevin Shattenkirk, Karl Alzner, Nate Schmidt, Daniel Winnik, Marcus Johansson and in came, well, almost nothing. The team did bring in Devante Smith-Pelly as a bottom-six option, but spent most of their time re-signing players like T.J. Oshie, Evgeny Kuznetsov and Dmitry Orlov to long-term deals that will keep them in town until at least 2023. Those extensions came with a price—not only were they forced to move Johansson in a salary dump to division rival New Jersey, but they’re in cap trouble heading into the season already.
When taking a look at the CapFriendly page for the Capitals, you will notice that they currently have about $4.1MM in space for the upcoming season. With that knowledge, you might surmise that they’ll be able to add at least a couple of veteran options to help them, or a bounce-back candidate or two. What you have to remember though, is that the Capitals are at their $70.9MM projected cap hit for just 17 players. A regular NHL roster holds 23, meaning there are several names coming up from the minors to fill the ranks.
Yes, the Capitals do have several players in the minor leagues who should be able to contribute positively this year like Christian Djoos, Nathan Walker and Chandler Stephenson, but each one comes with a cost of their own. Just because they’re on entry-level or two-way contracts doesn’t mean they’re free, and with each call up a minimum of $650K is added to that cap number. For some, like Jakub Vrana a top option to make the team after a solid season split between the AHL and NHL last year that number creeps even higher.
Even if you take that minimum $650K number for the six players to be added, it ends up putting the Capitals less than $200K under the cap to start the season meaning even a $1MM contract for a veteran option like Thomas Vanek would be out of their price range. Sure, there are ways they could work around the cap like any team but the clear picture here is that they’ve put themselves in quite a precarious position. Even if they work some magic to be right up against the cap with some help, any performance bonuses earned by those on entry-level deals will carry over to next season and put them in a tough position again when faced with the free agency of John Carlson. Washington relies on Carlson as a huge part of their defense corps, and seeing him walk because they didn’t have the money to pay him would set them back even further.
So when wondering if the Capitals can afford to make any more moves in free agency, or a trade that takes on a bit of salary don’t look at the $4.1MM cap space figure. They’re much closer than that in reality, and could be forced into relying on quite a young roster this season.
I beg to differ on Jakub Vrana. He was awful down the stretch in Hershey. His compete level disappeared. He was a healthy scratch for several for several games in the Calder Cup playoffs & Hershey head coach specifically pointed to Vrana’s effort level as the reason for him being scratched. Nathan Walker is the exact opposite. He shows up every single night