Washington Capitals: Top 3 takeaways of the NHL Expansion Draft

#2 Vitek Vanecek’s loss was the worst case scenario

Yes touching any member of the fourth line would’ve been bad. Losing a Nic Dowd, or Garnet Hathaway or Carl Hagelin was my initial thought of a worst case scenario. When the leak came out and things became a reality that night knowing that Vitek Vanecek was a new member of the Kraken, this loss would hurt the Caps mostly off the ice than on the ice.

On the ice, the Caps lose a young rookie netminder for nothing. That is bad enough. To make matters worse, Vanecek doesn’t make a lot of money so one of the cheaper contracts imaginable now comes off the books for the Caps.

The 25 year old goalie from the Czech Republic was an integral part in the Caps pandemic shortened 2021 season. He went from third on the depth chart to challenging Ilya Samsonov for the starter’s job. He was named the starting goaltender in the playoffs before suffering a season ending injury.

Vanecek will become a restricted free agent in 2022 and has a cap hit of $716,667. He was a second round pick by the Caps in 2014 and went 21-10-4 with a .908 save percentage and 2.69 goals against average in his rookie season.