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Reviewing Brian MacLellan’s “To-Do” List For The Washington Capitals 2023 Off-Season


Following the injury-laden and overall disappointing 2022-23 regular season, the Capitals enter this off-season at a major crossroads. The Capitals’ roster is centered around a core group of players that have bloated contracts and have started to see a downturn in overall performance and effectiveness.

With the injury bug and aging variables at play, the Capitals missed the playoffs for the first time since the 2013-14 season, and just the second time since the 2006-07 season.  For most teams that face this scenario, the typical solution is to rebuild the roster and focus on the future. The Capitals are not one of those teams.

Along with the five-year extension that Alexander Ovechkin signed in the summer of 2021, promises were made by the front office and ownership that the roster would still be constructed to contend through the end of Ovechkin’s career in Washington. What makes this scenario so complicated is the fact that the Capitals are truly at the end of their Stanley Cup contention window.

For a team that’s been playoff quality for the past 15 years or so, that typically results in a shallow prospect pool, a lack of young NHL talent that had to be moved due to cap space, and a reduced stock of draft capital. With your top paid players being players past their prime years, it’s difficult to add viable, younger, proven talent to the roster in free agency or in trades that might just require picks or prospects. For the Caps, bringing in more effective talent will require some salary cap gymnastics, whether that means trading for players with similar cap hits, or paying premium assets or picks to a team like the Arizona Coyotes to absorb their contracts.

By selling at the 2023 Trade Deadline, the Caps and Brian MacLellan were able to recoup some draft capital and a young NHL quality player in Rasmus Sandin. MacLellan was also able to add younger contributors like Dylan Strome, Sonny Milano, and Nicolas Aube-Kubel. That’s a good start for sure, but this is likely the defining moment for Brian MacLellan’s tenure as the Washington Capitals’ general manager. In this post, we’ll be breaking down what should be his top objectives to accomplish this summer.

Hire a new head coach fill out the coaching staff

The Capitals are essentially getting a fresh start behind the bench this off-season with the departures of Peter Laviolette, Blaine Forsythe, and Kevin McCarthy. Only Scott Allen, who headed-up the very effective penalty kill unit this season, will remain in his current role.

There are a bevy of options for the next head coach of the Capitals that we’ve covered this year. If the Capitals decide to go after a younger head coach without NHL head coaching experience, I’d expect a more veteran-laden assistant coaching staff to support them.

Make an assessment on Kuznetsov and Mantha’s contracts

In order to bring in new talent, the Capitals will have to part ways with at least one of their higher cap hit contracts. Kuznetsov and Mantha make the most sense here in terms of their high cap hits being based on their offensive production. Mantha was actually surprisingly good defensively this season, but he’s being paid for his offensive production. With 11 goals and 16 assists in 67 games, his offensive prowess was rather underwhelming this season.

Kuznetsov is trickier. He was the catalyst for the Capitals’ Stanley Cup run in 2018, but hasn’t really come close to that level of effort and execution since then. He’s had good seasons offensively for sure, but he hasn’t taken over games (or playoff series) like we saw in the 2018 playoffs. Kuznetsov also has two more seasons remaining on his contract with a cap hit of $7.8M. With the term remaining on the contract, there’s no chance the Capitals retain salary in a trade. The Kuznetsov scenario hinges on two things: do you see if the new coaching staff can get Kuznetsov back to where he was in the spring of 2018; or is there a similar player needing a change of scenery that the Capitals could swap Kuznetsov for?

In my mind, the Kuznetsov trade will never be market value for the type of player Kuznetsov is. When he’s playing at his full potential, Kuznetsov is a top player in the league. The issue is, when he’s not playing at his full potential, he’s effectively a replacement level player. Other GMs will know this, and a team that’s looking to potentially start contending for the playoffs might bite on this since they might have more cap space to work with, but what would the Caps get in return?

According to PuckPedia, the Capitals are entering the summer with $6,524,167 in cap space (assuming the cap ceiling will be $83.5M). With that, they still have roster spots to fill in and sign players to new contracts. If the salary cap only goes up a million dollars (from $82.5M to $83.5M), cap space will be a premium asset.

Assess the future of Nicklas Backstrom

At the start of the off-season for the Capitals, we really dove into the quandary that the Capitals are facing with Backstrom’s performance after returning from his hip resurfacing procedure, his expensive cap hit, and the career paths of players who have received this procedure in the past.

The future is very murky for Backstrom’s career. He’s optimistic because he’s finally pain-free and can have a full summer to condition and get closer to being who he once was on the ice. MacLellan wasn’t quite as optimistic.

If Backstrom remains closer to his performance level we saw this past season, he’s at best a third line center and power play specialist. His contract that extends through the 2024-25 season with a cap hit of $9.2M makes that a very expensive endeavor.

That $9.2M can go a long way in reshaping the roster. The issue is, if the Capitals wait until Backstrom shows up to training camp in late summer, the opportunities to acquire players might have passed. On the other hand, Backstrom has earned a chance to prove himself this summer through his decade and a half of top tier performance on the ice.

Either route is a difficult decision. Do the Caps talk Backstrom into retirement? Would MacLellan actually trade Backstrom if they weren’t in agreement about the path forward? Would Backstrom be placed on the long term injury list with a doctor’s corroboration?

To me, this is the biggest story of the summer for the Capitals.

Acquire two top six forwards

If you’ve been following along in the analytical posts we’ve had throughout the season, the Capitals really struggled where it matters most: finishing scoring chances. For the first time in a long time, the Capitals’ bottom six forwards were more effective as a whole during even strength, and the top six struggled to score goals (outside of Ovechkin and Strome). Realistically, you could include TJ Oshie as a part of the top six, but he’s best suited for third line deployments at this point in his career. He’d add some scoring depth to the equation there, and the Caps could limit his minutes to prop up his effectiveness during even-strength game scenarios.

The two top-six forward ask makes sense: you need a scorer on the right side of the ice. Tom Wilson, with a full off-season to train, should be quite effective there, but there’s not a great option on the roster to pick up the slack for scoring on the right side of the ice when Wilson is on the bench.

A player like Nick Schmaltz makes a lot of sense here. We’ve talked about him as a possible acquisition target from the Arizona Coyotes because for one, he’s 27 and in his prime years, so he’s outside of the contention window for the perpetually rebuilding Coyotes. He’s also position flexible, with the ability to play both right wing and center.

There’s been a lot of noise around Evgeny Kuznetsov this off-season. From his disappointing offensive production compared to the 2021-22 season to just an apparent lack of intensity and effort, it looks like his time in DC might be over. That leaves a great big hole for the Caps in their top two center spots. The Capitals are likely going to sweep the trade market for a young center that’s in need of a larger role than he’s getting with his current team.

Sign Martin Fehervary to a new contract

Fehervary is currently a restricted free agent without arbitration rights, so the Capitals can tender him a qualifying offer to retain his rights through the summer. For the Capitals, there are a couple of options: offer Fehervary a bridge contract (a short term deal that will keep Fehervary as a restricted free agent when it expires), or offer him a long term contract.

The bridge contract is valuable because you can typically get a lower cap hit since you’re not eating into any of the player’s unrestricted free agent years. The downside is, if the player improves greatly and becomes an invaluable asset on the ice, the next contract becomes even more expensive.

A long term deal is beneficial because you can lock in a player for a considerable amount of time (up to eight years), and it’s essentially a bet that the player will play to their potential value for most of the contract. You might pay more in the beginning of the contract, but you get more long term cost certainty. The downside is, if you’re eating into unrestricted free agent years, you’re going to end up paying a higher cap hit to the player.

In my mind, the bridge contract makes more sense for Fehervary. The Caps are tight on cap space, and might opt to just offer Fehervary a two year contract to build in some more cost certainty for more than just one season. With cap space at a premium, the lower the cap hit you can get him to agree to, the more money you can invest in other players.

Explore options for proven left-hand defensemen

The Capitals are going to be very close to the salary cap ceiling throughout the summer, unless drastic changes are made to the roster. For a team that’s banking on an aggressive retooling of the roster to try to win Ovechkin one last Stanley Cup before he retires, would you bank that off of three 23 year olds on the left side of the blueline?

On one hand, you want to have younger players on the roster that can grow into valuable contributors on the ice. On the other, though, you want to have players you know are valuable contributors that you can depend upon. We’ve covered some potential options like Ryan Graves and Vladislav Gavrikov who would be dependable top four defensive defensemen.

Putting it all together

If the Capitals and MacLellan can address all these problem areas this summer, we may see a vastly improved roster come October. This is going to be the most important off-season of MacLellan’s career, and his legacy is likely going to be based off of his execution of the plan in hand.

This is MacLellan’s chance to mold the roster in his vision. Sure, the Caps won the Stanley Cup in 2018, due to timely trades and additions to the roster’s supporting cast around the established core group of forwards. But, the core was largely built around the players that his predecessor George McPhee drafted.

Not only is this a decent chance to retool the roster to potentially send Ovechkin out as a Stanley Cup champion for the second time, but it’s a great chance to build and identify the “next core”. The ideal scenario is that MacLellan can retool the roster without substantially mortgaging the future, which would extend the impending rebuild considerably.

By Justin Trudel

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