Washington Capitals: Top 10 best players heading into the Expansion Draft
#1 Vitek Vanecek
We’ve been talking about these leaks the last several slides and of course by the power of Murphy’s law, the leaks happened right as we were writing this article! But we shall dissect this on this final slide and then talk more about it in a new article coming out soon.
In a report from NHL insider Frank Servalli which sounds like he already got his hands on the draft list which was submitted at 10 a.m. eastern one of the goaltenders the Seattle Kraken selected was indeed Vitek Vanecek.
Sounds like the three goaltenders selected by #SeaKraken will be Chris Driedger (FLA), Vitek Vanecek (WSH) and Joey Daccord (OTT).
— Frank Seravalli (@frank_seravalli) July 21, 2021
@DFOHockey
What does this mean for the future of the Caps in the crease? Well now a lot of moves are about to be made because only $716,667 is coming off the books to the already $9 million the Caps have to spend this offseason. And they need to extend the contracts of both Alex Ovechkin and Ilya Samsonov now.
Vanecek had a solid rookie season with a 21-10-4 record with a 2.69 goals against average and a .908 save percentage. He stepped in when Ilya Samsonov missed time with COVID and filled in nicely. This was thrown onto him after Henrik Lundqvist missed the season with heart surgery.
Related Story. Washington Capitals: Was Justin Schultz Signed To Be Taken In The Expansion Draft?. light
Vanecek will compete for the starters job and the Kraken will be lucky to have him. More on this report in a moment.