What is next to address for the Capitals this offseason?

August is the hardest month of the year. It’s the dog days of summer and we’re just waiting for Washington Capitals hockey. The roster for next season is pretty much assembled. Or is it?

Not yet as per CapFriendly the Capitals are over six million above the cap. I think now they’re waiting on the news of Carl Hagelin to see how much of next season he will likely miss. Could be all of it.

But once they know the answer to that they can address that fourth line left wing position. There’s a couple of options. Axel Jonsson Fjallby, yeah he’s even got the hair and he’s faster.

Next they gotta decide if Connor McMichael is ready for the full time third line center position. If he is that could mean trading Lars Eller, doing so wouldn’t quite put them back under the cap but would make them halfway there which means ugh there’s gotta be one more move.

I think the Caps are good on defensemen so they would likely have to move another forward. Or they would have to put someone on waivers. They may wait until training camp to see who has what it takes.

But yeah while the Caps certainly might not be done yet they could either make a trade or place someone on waivers. It’s all up to Brian MacLellan who acquired Connor Brown, Dylan Strome, and Erik Gustafsson this offseason.

As far as re-siginings go, GMBM re-signed Matt Irwin. He also traded Vitek Vanecek to the New Jersey Devils to move up in this year’s NHL Draft and decided not to give a qualifying offer to Ilya Samsonov.

In their place in goal the Caps have Darcy Kuemper and Charlie Lindgren. A huge upgrade there. We’ll see what the Caps do with their salary cap overage in the coming weeks.