ARLINGTON, Va. — The Washington Capitals are beginning to finalize their opening night roster for Friday’s matchup against the Pittsburgh Penguins. Team’s have until 5 p.m. today to submit their 23-man roster. The Caps had some juggling to do after Monday’s practice.
The Capitals announced that Max Pacioretty will be placed on long-term injured-reserve, which frees up $2 million in cap. Pacioretty is still recovering from his second Achilles’ tear and has yet to skate. He will miss at least the first 10 games of the season.
#Caps will submit opening night roster to NHL’s offices by 5 pm deadline today, but it will not mirror actual opening night roster. Caps are planning some paper transactions for today for salary cap purposes, and will unveil actual opening roster Wed. am, before practice.
— Mike Vogel (@VogsCaps) October 9, 2023
Meanwhile, Joel Edmundson was placed on injured-reserve. Edmundson will miss at least four to six weeks after fracturing his hand during a scrimmage. He was seen in a non-contact jersey on Saturday.
The #ALLCAPS opening roster is $1.987M over the cap with 22 players on roster (13F/7D/2G) + Edmundson IR & Pacioretty LTIR.
This comes w/in $13K of optimal LTIR. They can subsequently add Edmundson to LTIR gaining $1.75M Space & swap Protas/Sutterhttps://t.co/5ZwtCSRhrT
— PuckPedia (@PuckPedia) October 9, 2023
The Caps also announced that Connor McMichael, Hardy Häman Aktell and Aliaksei Protas have been loaned to the Hershey Bears. However, this are paper transactions in order to be cap compliant, so they will likely remain with D.C. for the time being. Washington also recalled Riley Sutter from Hershey.
The Capitals final opening night roster will be revealed on Wednesday, Oct. 11 at 11 a.m.
By Jacob Cheris
Interesting that Miro was not on the ice but is still on the roster. And then sending Protas and McMichael down and bringing Sutter up. I know those are all paper transactions designed to optimize the LTIR allotment which is based on opening day Cap hit.
In my Cap Friendly model i had Miro going down with Aktell. Edmundson on IR and Paches on LTIR. I think that is where it shakes out on Wednesday which means we are under cap barely with 22 players (13/7/2). If they want Miro to hang around for a bit then Edmundson must go on LTIR.
As long as Mantha is watching games from the press box, I’m happy.
No one claimed Axel off of waivers yet. Sportskeeda says 7 players were claimed off waivers across the league so far this preseason, two of them by Pits. 245 have cleared waivers and they list 29 as still pending. That includes Axel, Nathan Walker, and Zach Bogosian (I mention Zach because he is known among Bolts fans for his BBQs — I have a BBQ turner made from one of his sticks).
Bogosian has some type of remaining but dwindling value as a 6th or 7th defensive dman, the other 2 are fringe forwards
I was more shocked to see Wade Allison, and AJ Greer hit the waiver wire. Allison is a solid young power forward who needs to find a way to stay healthy. Greer is a consistent bruising force on the 4th line, Calgary did well to claim him from the B’s (the Bs fanbase was not happy to lose Greer)
But Bogo is a great BBQer and that is going to be hard for him in Syracuse.
Seriously, The Bolts and Bally have put out some good specials, sometimes going back with players to their roots, sometimes following them around as they live their lives today. BBQs, jetboats, Halloween, a lot of fun things. Bogo was the chef. Pat Maroon was the most fun. Now both are gone.
As the salary cap has been around since 2005-2006 it seems that the Caps are always terrible at managing it. I am sorry but signing players and then having to use LTIR to get under the cap says bad management of the salary cap to me. So who goes down if and when Pacioretty and Edmundson are ready to play? This scenario with the salary cap and its management is becoming a broken record.
I get it, but that’s also the price of having multiple high skilled players including Hall of Famers towards the end of their careers
Simple answer Oshie will get hurt or Backstrom this is an old team.
At the time they signed Edmundson, he was not injured. He did not get injured until the pre-season games started. That being said, I disagreed with signing him. I figured why acquire a third pairing defenseman when we had several kids vying for the role who could at least be adequate.
Maybe just maybe one of the moves between now and then will be the termination of Manthas’ contract. That would free up space and money to have both Protas and McMichael on the team where they belong not in Hershey. Also what a wasted signing of Patches and even worse the trade for Edmundson. These moves are about as good and useful as Ted and his new network!!
You can’t terminate a contract just like that, unless it’s mutual, and Anthony won’t give up $5.7 mill of cash, just for practicing, and floating around on the ice, in game situations. There was a buyout period, but that was in the summer.
Exactly! Mutual termination would be great, but good luck getting Mantha to agree to it. This contract (done by Detroit) was poorly structured. Often contracts are front loaded so the contracts are easier to move towards the end. Mantha salary this year is $5.7M (as is his Cap space). If he was getting a salary of say $2M (with 5.7M cap hit), then he may consider a termination just to get a fresh start and sign a prove it deal. But he ain’t giving up 5.7M. Especially since he might not make that much across the rest of his career.
The Ted Sports Network (otherwise known as MSN) will not let me use my Cox Fairfax subscription if I’m away from Fairfax. But the Roku MSN app can’t get past the TVEactivate screen and the Android app won’t run at all since upgrading to Android 14. No Kindle version. So far I can at least access the website on the PC but it is poorly organized and doesn’t seem to have any consistency. Does he have grandkids? Did one of them design all this?