Washington Capitals: Top 3 needs heading into free agency
Top 3 needs for the Washington Capitals in free agency.
The Washington Capitals failed in 2020 to deliver a second Stanley Cup. Their season came to an abrupt end almost a week ago at the hands of the New York Islanders in five games. What followed was the dismissal of head coach Todd Reirden.
The Caps will obviously have to look for a new coach. If you want to see some good veteran options we’ve got that for you here. Besides needing a new coach there are also some free agents the Caps should have on their shopping list.
We will address the top 3 needs on the Caps shopping list as they enter free agency, whenever that may be but we’re guessing sometime in October after the Stanley Cup is awarded.
It is likely the salary cap will remain flat at $81.5 million thanks to the novel coronavirus pandemic. This doesn’t help a team like the Caps who always spend to the cap every year.
It’ll be different not having this in the summer and having it in the fall instead when we should be gearing up for a new season but alas, this is where we are. Here are the Caps top 3 needs.
Forwards
The Capitals have two forwards who are free agents this offseason. Ilya Kovalchuk is an unrestricted free agent while Travis Boyd is a restricted free agent. Kovalchuk’s cap hit is $350,000 (Montreal paying more) while Boyd’s is $800,000. Both will likely command a raise and out of the two they will likely bring back Boyd because he’s an RFA.
That means that Ilya Kovalchuk could be on the move in free agency so the Caps will once again have to address the third line winger position. There are a variety of big names on the market. Those include Taylor Hall, Ryan Callahan, Mikhael Granlund, Mikko Koivu, Nathan Horton, David Clarkson, Mike Hoffman, Wayne Simmnods, Alex Galenchyuk and Carl Soderberg.
There’s questions on what the Caps will need to do with their bottom six on the third line. Will they trade someone like Richard Panik or Carl Hagelin? The fourth line seems intact and was really good with Garnet Hathaway and Nic Dowd. Hathaway was brought in as a free agent last summer.
The Caps will also have to put into account how much money they want to spend with Ovechkin due a raise when contract talks begin come training camp time.
Defense
The Capitals have two UFAs and one RFA on the blue line this offseason. The unrestricted free agents are Brenden Dillon and Radko Gudas while the restricted free agent is Jonas Siegenthaler. I would be shocked if the team didn’t bring back Siegenthaler. I also wrote about how re-sigining Dillon should be a priority.
Siegenthaler carries a cap hit of $714,166. Dillon’s cap hit is $1,635,000 while Gudas carries a $2,345,000 cap hit after his trade last summer when they shipped Matt Niskanen to the Philadelphia Flyers.
There are several names out on the market that the Caps could look at if they’re unable to re-sign Dillon or Gudas. We’ve talked about how they should look into Chris Tanev, you can read more about that here.
There are other names out there too. Trevor Van Riemsdyk, Dylan Demelo, Dustin Byfuglien, Alex Pietrangelo, Justin Schultz, Tyson Barrie, Torey Krug, Andy Greene, Sami Vatanen among others.
We’ve talked about how the Caps should re-sign Brenden Dillon this offseason to help improve the defense. Adding a defenseman who’s proven is high on Washington’s shopping list.
That leaves us to one more need that we’ll address for free agency and this need is more clear than ever.
Goalies
The biggest storyline all season long has been what the future will hold for Braden Holtby, who’s expected to get a raise this summer. But what if the novel coronavirus pandemic (which will keep the salary cap flat) as well as declining stats might be enough to keep Holtby in Washington for one more year?
“It’s still to be decided. I think it’s going to be difficult but sometimes opportunities come up that you don’t expect and I think we’d like to play it out and see what happens,” said Capitals General Manager Brian MacLellan.
The Caps selected Ilya Samsonov in 2015 and he had a good rookie season. It is likely he’s the goaltender of the future. Say the Caps move on from Holtby, they would have to do one of two options: Bring up Pheonix Copley or Vitek Vanecek or shop for a veteran free agent goalie.
The Caps might likely go that route of the veteran netminder and there’s some options available. One option is Robin Lehner from the Vegas Golden Knights. Others include Corey Crawford, which will be tough to pull off, Craig Anderson, Jimmy Howard, Jacob Markstrom, Thomas Greiss, Cam Talbot, Anton Khudobin, and Mike Condon to name a few.
More. Mike Green hangs up his skates. light
These are the Caps top 3 needs heading into free agency. What kind of moves would you like to see the Caps do during free agency? Let us know in the comments!