Washington Capitals: Losing Nate Schmidt will haunt team
The Washington Capitals lost defenseman Nate Schmidt to the Vegas Golden Knights. It shows a failure of asset management and will haunt the Caps.
Going into the 2017 NHL Expansion Draft, the Washington Capitals decided not to protect young defenseman Nate Schmidt. To be fair, it was the lesser of numerous evils. Protecting him might not have been wise, let alone plausible.
The Capitals gambled by leaving him exposed to the Vegas Golden Knights. And when you gamble in Vegas, the house tends to win. The Golden Knights were the house, and in selecting Nate Schmidt, they sure won.
Losing Schmidt is going to hurt the Capitals for several reasons. Most directly, Washington now doesn’t have an internal replacement for Karl Alzner. Of course, the Capitals could just re-sign the soon to be free agent defenseman. But considering how quickly Alzner has declined, that’s not in the best interest of their future.
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With prospect Christian Djoos being the best remaining left handed defenseman in the organization, the Capitals will have to explore options in free agency and the trade market. Especially in the former, they won’t be able to find a value like Schmidt. Washington will have to allocate resources to finding a new second pairing defenseman. And they’ll have to do so while weighing their options with John Carlson, who’s a free agent after the 2017-18 season.
Secondly, Washington likely can’t re-sign T.J. Oshie with Schmidt gone. Even before losing Schmidt, keeping the free agent forward with a $75 million salary cap ceiling was going to take a minor miracle. Now one has to believe re-signing Oshie would be robbing Peter to pay Paul. This is a double whammy to the Capitals’ Stanley Cup chances because T.J. would have made those chances much better.
What stings even more is Washington had the opportunity to pay to keep Schmidt. As fans, we might never know what George McPhee asked the Capitals to pay to keep him. But whatever the price was, if it was feasible, it would have been worth it.
According to a source, Caps were in discussion with VGK on a trade that would've saved Schmidt. Asking price too high.
— Isabelle Khurshudyan (@ikhurshudyan) June 21, 2017
Next: 3 replacements for Nate Schmidt
Replacing Schmidt will not be impossible, but no matter how tough you think losing him is, it’s probably even more so. Hopefully Vegas will hold on to him instead of trading him. Because if the Golden Knights trade Schmidt to an Eastern Conference team, the Capitals will have to stare a horrendous failure on their part in the face multiple times each season.