As the Capitals and General Manager Brian MacLellan are poised to enter the 2023 off-season with a quick retooling strategy in mind, modifications to the team’s roster will likely continue well into the summer. This will include consideration of adding players from around the league to their 2023-24 roster.
This post will be the first in a series that will cover potential players for the Capitals to acquire. With the Capitals owning 11 total picks over the first three rounds for the next three drafts, there’s plenty of draft capital to utilize as the Caps look to get both younger and better entering the 2023-24 season and beyond. The first player we’ll be analyzing is Vancouver Canucks right wing Brock Boeser.
The statistics and salary cap information used in this post are courtesy of Natural Stat Trick, Hockey Reference, CapFriendly, Evolving Hockey, and HockeyViz. If you’d like to learn more about the statistical terms used in this post, please check out our NHL Analytics Glossary.
Needs Adressed
Boeser’s skill set matches what MacLellan mentioned as a potential target area: a top six forward with skill. On top of that, the Capitals were absolutely brutal in finishing scoring chances from the right side of the ice this season, and Boeser can add a bit more depth scoring in the middle six forward group.
Background
Boeser is a 26-year-old right winger and a former first round pick (23rd overall) by the Vancouver Canucks in the 2015 NHL Entry Draft. So far this season, he has 12 goals, 29 assists, and 41 points in 56 games played. In his career, he has 133 goals, 164 assists, and 297 points in 380 games played.
You might be asking why the Canucks would move on from a 26-year-old, former four-time 20-goal scorer. Boeser has been garnering buzz in trade rumors, largely due to the three-year extension he signed last summer that carries a $6.65M cap hit.
Five-on-five on-ice performance
First up, let’s take a look at Boeser’s performance during five-on-five play in terms of his possession metrics:
So, overall, Boeser isn’t performing quite out of the norm for the Canucks as a whole, but you can ask a former first round pick making over $6M a year to elevate the team a bit more. Here’s Boeser’s five-on-five scoring chance generation marks:
The reason I’m bringing up the Canucks’ team performance in these statistics is that it’s rather indicative that the Canucks are performing poorly as a whole and it might be negatively impacting Boeser’s performance. That’s not to say that Boeser couldn’t be playing better, since it’s always possible to be a high-level player on a bad team (look at Elias Pettersson on the Canucks as an example).
Rate-Adjusted Plus Minus (RAPM)
RAPM is an efficient way to measure a player’s performance in relation to the league, and in relation to replacement level. Here’s Boeser’s RAPM chart from Evolving Hockey:
To show what Boeser’s peak level performance can look like, let’s turn back the clock to the 2020-21 season:
Roster Fit
With a player like Boeser who has a relatively large cap hit, the cap situation and roster construction has to make sense. After the Capitals extended Trevor van Riemsdyk to a three-year, $3M cap hit extension on Saturday, the Capitals have $7,369,166 in cap space if the cap ceiling only goes up a modest $1M. With that, the Capitals only have 11 forwards, 4 defensemen, and 2 goalies signed to contracts next season. Martin Fehervary and Alex Alexeyev are due new contracts as restricted free agents.
Fehervary could either be signed to a long-term extension or a short term bridge contract. A bridge contract would offer the Caps a bit more near-term cap flexibility, but it could mean Fehervary developing further and resulting in a much higher cap hit if the Caps don’t sign him to a seven or eight year contract this off-season. A longer term deal will have a higher cap hit.
Realistically, the only way this acquisition works is if Anthony Mantha is sent to Vancouver in a package to acquire Boeser. Trade values are all over the planet right now, so I won’t make any conjectures about what else would be involved in the trade. The win for the Canucks in this case is getting off of Boeser’s contract, and getting an NHL quality forward back whose contract expires after next season. The Canucks could hope for a Mantha resurgence to flip at the trade deadline next season for assets, or they get a serviceable player for their top nine forward group for next season.
Does this make sense for the Caps?
Boeser has all the talent in the world, but the Caps and their pro scouts will have to really like what they’ve seen from Boeser’s game to make a move for a forward with that sizeable of a cap hit and term remaining on the deal. If the Caps acquire him and he returns to being a 20-plus goal scorer for the remainder of his contract, that’s clearly a win for the Caps.
On the other hand, if he continues sub-par play (for a player of his caliber), being hampered with a sizeable cap hit on a team with quite a few of those big contracts will be an albatross in trying to manage cap flexibility for the remainder of the Ovechkin Era. He’s definitely an option, but the move is full of risk. I’m not sure how risk averse MacLellan is after the Caps missed the playoffs for the first time since the 2013-14 season, and the first time in MacLellan’s tenure as GM.
By Justin Trudel