On Thursday the Washington Capitals added to their prospect pool by signing college free agent Clay Stevenson from Dartmouth. This news was first reported by NHL insider Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet.
Stevenson is a goaltender who played junior hockey with the Coquitlam Express in the BCHL before just wrapping up his first season in the NCAA. The undrafted free agent is listed as six foot four and 195 pounds. This is their second prospect free agent signing after they inked forward Henrik Rybinski.
Earlier in the week, the Caps hosted Stevenson for a visit at MedStar Capitals Iceplex according to The Athletic’s Tarik El-Bashir. He had interest from other teams including the New York Rangers, Vancouver Canucks and Seattle Kraken per Rick Dhaliwal, also from The Athletic. Stevenson ended up making the right choice.
Stevenson’s first season playing division one hockey saw him go 6-14-2 with a 2.70 goals against average and a .922 save percentage. That looks like a down season but overall Dartmouth was bad. Despite the down year, Stevenson managed to be tied at the endow the season for the third best save percentage in the ECAC conference.
Stevenson also collated some accolades including being named to the All ECAC Hockey third team, the All ECAC rookie team, a finalist for ECAC Hockey’s Ken Dryden Goaltender of the Year Award, and the All Ivy League first team.
In the Ivy League games, he led the conference with 255 saves as well as saves per game at 28.33 while finishing second in save percentage at .934.
There’s no telling what his future will hold. He can likely continue playing for Dartmouth or he could find some kind of role with one of the minor league teams within the organization. The Caps have that reputation for successfully developing goaltenders for the big show. We’ll see if he makes that jump in a few years.