The NHL Trade Deadline is on March 7 and right now the Washington Capitals sit in a quality spot in the standings. Following their Saturday night win over the Pittsburgh Penguins, Washington is tops in the NHL with a 31-10-5 record and 67 points through 46 games.
It's a good spot and it's a scary spot. They are two points ahead of the Winnipeg Jets and six ahead of the Vegas Golden Knights and Edmonton Oilers. Washington is seven points ahead of the Toronto Maple Leafs. Over in the Metropolitan Division, the Caps are nine points better than the New Jersey Devils.
For this exercise we will look at the last five seasons. Last season the Caps were sellers as they traded away Evgeny Kuznetsov, Anthony Mantha and Joel Edmundson for draft picks. While it sadly resulted in a first round sweep by the New York Rangers, Washington wasn't sitting in as good a spot in the standings which put them in the position to sell.
The Capitals still made the playoffs anyway and now they have a target on the backs of NHL teams everywhere. Then there was the 2022-23 season where the team didn't make the playoffs at all. That year saw the team trade for Rasmus Sandin, who was eventually signed onto a long term deal as well as Craig Smith who had five goals in 22 games.
In that trade deadle the Caps parted ways with Erik Gustafsson, Marcus Johansson, Lars Eller, Dmitry Orlov, Garnet Hathaway and Andrei Sevetlakov. Now Lars Eller is back on the Caps.
In the 2021-22 season the Caps said goodbye to Daniel Sprong and hello to the Johansson reunion that lasted for one year as well as Johan Larsson who had one goal in 14 games.
In the 2020-21 season the Capitals traded away Jakub Vrana, Richard Panik and Jonas Siegenthaler. Vrana is back on the team currently but back then the Caps would get Mantha, who played for a few seasons before getting traded last season as well as Michael Raffl who had one goal in 10 games.
In the 2019-20 season the Capitals parted with Christian Djoos as well as their 2020 third round pick which turned out to be Dylan Peterson. In that, they would get Brendan Dillon who played the following season then got dealt, Daniel Sprong, who would play the next season before getting traded, and then Ilya Kovalchuk who had a goal in seven games.
In the 2018-19 season it was Madison Bowey who got traded. That deal saw the Capitals land Nick Jensen and Carl Hagelin. The season before that, the year they went on to win the Stanley Cup, the Caps actually didn't trade anybody but they did pick up Michal Kempny and Jakub Jerabek.
Jerabek had a goal in 11 games and Kempny had 52 points in 180 games and was a key fixture in the Stanley Cup run.