Washington Capitals: 5 players who won’t be back in 2021
As of this writing, the Washington Capitals will return many of their faces from last year’s team. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t any players that already walked out the door. We’ll take a look at each of them here.
The Caps entered this offseason with many pundits expecting a big shakeup. Instead a couple of taxi squad guys and a few defensemen have departed. Vitek Vanecek would’ve been on this list had the Caps not traded back for him.
As for Henrik Lundqvist, his future still remains unclear but the king is determined to get back on the ice whether it be for the Caps or another team.
Daniel Carr
Daniel Carr was one of the Caps first offseason departures. The forward spent a majority of last season on the taxi squad. Carr appeared in six games last season and recorded an assist. The Caps initially signed him back in October to a one year, two way deal. Now he heads to HC Lugano of the Swiss National League.
Carr did get some playoff action, replacing Daniel Sprong in the lineup during one of the games against the Boston Bruins. Now the 29 year old has taken his talents overseas.
Craig Anderson
After the news came that Henrk Lundqvist was going to sit out the season for open heart surgery, the Caps needed to find a solution in a new veteran netminder. They went with Craig Anderson, signing him to a PTO (professional tryout agreement, I honestly have no idea why there’s an O in there).
After Ilya Samsonov solidified his starting spot for opening night, Vitek Vanecek impressed the coaches enough to earn a backup spot. That left Anderson as the odd man out but thanks to the taxi squad addition was still able to practice and travel with the team, helping mentor the two young goalies.
Anderson appeared in four regular season games, going 2-1-0 with a 2.13 goals against average and a .915 save percentage. After Vitek Vanecek hurt himself in Game 1 following a goal scored by the Boston Bruins, the Caps turned to Craig Anderson for the remainder of Game 1 and Game 2.
In Game 1 which was the lone game the Caps won that series, Anderson made 21 saves off of 22 shots that he faced for a .955 save percentage. He followed that up in Game 2 turning away 44 of the 48 shots that he faced for a .917 save percentage.
After the season, there was rumors that the 40 year old would retire. Instead, he has joined the Buffalo Sabres.
Michael Raffl
The Caps acquired Michael Raffl as a depth forward at the trade deadline from the Philadelphia Flyers. He didn’t get a lot of playing time until later in the season when the injury bug decided to finally take a bite out of the Capitals at the worst possible time.
Raffl is now a member of the Dallas Stars and we are completely jealous of him that he gets to see Braden Holtby on a nightly basis next season. We miss you Holtby!
Raffl appeared in 10 games with the Capitals and recorded a goal and two assists for three points. Even though he scored one goal, it was a memorable goal in an otherwise unmemorable game.
The playoff matchup was already set when the Boston Bruins and Washington Capitals took the ice in Game 56. No matter what happened, they were going to see each other in the first round. Even so, Raffl scored the biggest goal of his life to give the Caps some early momentum heading into that series.
With the clock ticking down to the buzzer, Raffl had the puck and unleashed a sharp angle shot that went into the net with just 1.8 seconds to spare. It was like the Caps had a winning Raffl ticket at the time (okay I’ll stop, onto the next slide).
Zdeno Chara
It was really cool having Zdeno Chara on the Washington Capitals even though it only lasted for one season. Chara is still pondering whether he wants to suit up for a 24th season or hang up his skates for retirement. Either way, Chara had a storied career and won a lot of respect in that locker room.
Chara was mostly on the third pair with Nick Jensen and after a down year for Jensen, Chara as his partner helped him improve his game. Chara finished with two goals and eight assists for 10 points.
Chara had some decent advanced stats too. He had a Corsi For percentage of 49.50 percent, a 52.33 percent Expected Goals For percentage, and a 53.45 percent High Danger Chances For percentage.
Chara and Jensen, when paired together, had a combined Corsi For percentage of 48.63 percent, an Expected Goals For percentage of 51.42 percent, and a 52.52 percent High Danger Chances For percentage (advanced stats courtesy of the lovely Natural Stat Trick).
My favorite part of having Chara on the Caps wasn’t what he did on the ice but how he made the team chemistry gel off the ice. There’s a reason Alex Ovechkin loves to play “Find Big Zee” in the tunnel during warmups.
Brenden Dillon
No more Dilly Dilly :(. The Caps employed an interesting strategy in their protected list before the Seattle Kraken expansion draft. On the defense, they chose to protect John Carlson, Dmitry Orlov and Trevor van Riemsdyk. That third pick was a wild card but the Caps used this strategy in the hopes that the Kraken select one of their defensemen with a higher contract.
That plan didn’t quite work. The Kraken chose Vitek Vanecek and his small cap hit but the Caps were able to trade back for him after they signed Philipp Grubuaer in free agency. Still before all that madness happened, the Caps had to make a decision on which defensemen to let go and Brenden Dillon was the odd man out.
The Caps traded Dillon and his $3.9 million cap hit so they would have money to pay both Alex Ovechkin and Ilya Samsonov, both with contract extensions. Dillon brought a physicality to the defense that we hadn’t see in a while and he was never afraid to drop the gloves.
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Dillon scored two goals and added 17 assists for 19 points while appearing in all 56 games while having a 50.40 percent Corsi For Percentage. The Caps dealt him to the Winnipeg Jets in a salary dump move. Even though he only spent a season and a half here, we’ll all miss Dilly Dilly here at Stars and Sticks.