No the Capitals aren’t trading Tom Wilson dream on

Hockey Twitter is a ruthless place but nobody has it harder than Tom Wilson of the Washington Capitals. Whether it’s Pittsburgh Penguins fans after a hit on Zach Aston Reese. Whether it’s New York Rangers fans pretending they’re Commanders fans being mad at the owner. Whether it’s Toronto Maple Leafs fans tweeting Tom’s parents home address after a first round loss to the Caps where Tom Wilson was that dude.

So it’s been strange the last couple weeks on Hockey Twitter seeing fans of these said teams disregarding all that and watching the Caps retool fire sale and thinking to themselves, how can we add Tom Wilson to our team?

Dream on.

It ain’t happening. And I have no sources but can confidently bet on it.

Even if I did, they’d all say the same thing. “Hell no, we aren’t trading Tom Wilson.”

Now I don’t know what changed in their brains to think their team was going to possibly get, and I quote David Pastrnak of the Boston Bruins, the “greatest goal scorer of all time.”

Believe it or not, the NHL suspending Tom Wilson back in the spring of 2018 for that Aston Reese hit in the Penguins series actually helped the Caps. You don’t have a player like Tom Wilson on a lot of teams, in fact there’s only one. And that’s the type of guy you rally around and the team did just that.

That spring saw Wilson score five goals and 10 assists for 15 points. He then got paid over the summer in the middle of the Cup celebrations. His cap hit is $5,166,667 and the haters and even some worried Caps fans thought they overpaid him that year.

Turns out they didn’t.

Things got rocky with a 14 game suspension but when he came out of that his offense came with it. That year saw him score 22 goals and then 21 then next year. He had 13 goals during the COVID shortened year but who didn’t. Then last season he had a career high 24 before the injury.

Now he’s back on the ice and has seven goals and two assists for nine points in 14 games. Now his contract does run out after next season to that point Alex Ovechkin would have two years left on his contract. But Wilson is a guy you keep around. He’s 28. He’s nine years younger than Ovechkin. Hell he’s two years younger than me!

Wilson will be a team captain for sure once Ovechkin breaks the record and decides to hang it up. So wake up NHL fans of the other 31 teams. He ain’t going nowhere.