Should The Washington Capitals Consider Trading One Of Their Young Goalies

Before you read the title and throw a little conniption fit (those that would do that have probably already shared this title, and have had said fit) let me just clear something up. The odds of the Washington Capitals trading one of their young goalies, especially in season,  is probably not great. In fact, you could probably go ahead and say that those odds are just flat out bad.

However, if your are an NHL general manager, or a GM in any sport, you need to think of, and consider just about every option. When some of those options come up, you think about them and quickly dismiss them. In the Capitals case, that would be like trading Alex Ovechkin before the trade deadline to free up cap space. It’s an option, it has an ultimate goal, it’s quickly shoved aside.

That’s an easy one. That’s one that everyone can agree is a no brainer. Something that hasn’t been a no brainer in recent years has been the goalie situation in D.C. At times, the goalie situation has actually been a bit of a head scratcher. This year it’s a lot of the same. It could be that going forward as well.

The Capitals have two young goalies. Ilya Samsonov, who is 24-years-old, turning 25 towards the end of this season. The other is Vitek Vanecek. He is 25-years-old, he’ll be turning 26 before Samsonov turns 25. Both of these men have shown great promise and the potential to be starters at the NHL level. Both have also shown their inexperience and and both have shown that they might not be able to be trusted, at least not yet.

They both have shown that they can be very good. That is the absolute key here. Both of these guys are obvious NHL goalies at this point. Both guys will want to be starters at some point of their careers. If that comes in the nations capital, that’s great for Caps fans. That won’t happen. There is only one job.

So with that being a fact, should the Capitals trade one of their young goalies before or during the next offseason?

Before you give yourself an answer, we should maybe point of couple of things out. If I could send you over to CapFriendly for just a second or two, then we can look at something that is possibly very important here. Both of the Capitals goalies are on the final year of their current contracts. Both are an RFA after this season. Both will likely want some kind of raise, I’m guessing neither will want to take a pay cut, considering neither are making that much to begin with.

The Capitals are already up against the cap, they will not have much wiggle room unless they make a move somewhere else. Where could that move come? That’s a different argument for a different time.

The point here being, if the Capitals want to bring back both goalies, they are going to have to make room. If they’re lucky they can get Samsonov on a short term deal worth the same amount as it is now, $2m a year. Vanecek on the other hand, the way he is playing is going to need a pretty significant raise from his current cap hit of $716,667.

I don’t like guessing how much. I have no inside information, no access to people who would know something like this. Me guessing at how much Vanecek could get playing the way he is is a fruitless game. The same can be said of Samsonov. All I know is every time a Capitals player needs a raise it creates problems in terms of the salary cap.

So with those two big issues being mentioned, the fact that there can only be one starter, and the Capitals seemingly always being up against the cap these days, should the Capitals trade one of their young goalies?

I don’t think there should be much argument on who could or should be traded at the moment. The eye test alone tells you that Vanecek is the starter right now and in the near future. Maybe Samsonov can reclaim the net, maybe not. Only time will answer that. Quite frankly, I’m not here to tell you which one should be traded, again, assuming you think one should be traded in the first place. But facts are facts, Vanecek is the man, right now. Why would you trade your starter. You trade the highly thought of backup.

Knowing there can only be one guy going forward, why not trade one and get something for them. You might not be able to pay them both after this season anyways.

This is going to be an interesting thing to keep an eye on in the coming months, all the way up to the beginning of the next offseason. If one guy takes the reins will the Capitals reconsider, or flat out trade one of the young goalies?

Do you think the Capitals should trade one of them? Should they do everything they can to try to go forward with both, even if that means roster moves in other areas?