Washington Capitals
49-26-7, 105 points, 1st in the Metropolitan Division
2018 Stanley Cup Champions, defeated VGK 4-1
Additions: F Nic Dowd, F Jayson Megna, D Brooks Orpik (technically– traded to COL, bought-out by COL, signed by WSH as an UFA), F Sergei Shumakov, F Michael Sgarbossa
Subtractions: F Jay Beagle (signed with VAN), G Adam Carlsson (signed with Rapid City Rush, ECHL), F Alex Chiasson (signed to a PTO with EDM), F Tyler Graovac (signed with CGY), G Philipp Grubauer (traded to COL), D Jakub Jerabek (signed with EDM), F Tim McGauley (signed with Colorado Eagles, AHL), F Anthony Peluso (signed with CGY), F Zach Sill (signed, ELH), F Wayne Simpson (signed with Rochester Americans, AHL)
Still Unsigned: F Adam Chapie
Re-signed: F Riley Barber, D Madison Bowey, F Travis Boyd, F Liam O’Brien, F Devante Smith-Pelly, F Tom Wilson
Offseason Analysis: For the first time since the 2002 Stanley Cup champion Detroit Red Wings, the defending champion of the National Hockey League has a new coach behind the bench. Scotty Bowman retired from coaching after going out in style with the Cup in hand in Detroit.
The 2002 Red Wings lost their first two postseason games on home ice that year. Coincidentally, the 2018 Washington Capitals also lost their first two playoff games– on home ice too– en route to winning the Cup.
Unlike 2002, Barry Trotz did not retire. He took a higher paying job as head coach the New York Islanders, leaving Todd Reirden to assume the duties as the head coach of the Capitals after spending the last four seasons as an assistant coach.
Trotz left Washington after he would have received an automatic two-year extension and $300,000 raise. Given what top-NHL head coaches can make on the free agent market these days, let alone what some might get in a large market, Trotz resigned as the Caps head coach and more than doubled his salary with the Islanders in one offseason.
Reirden, 47, will be making his debut as an NHL head coach this season and will do so with a Stanley Cup winning roster still largely intact.
Gone are Philipp Grubauer (traded to Colorado), Jay Beagle (signed with Vancouver), Alex Chiasson and Jakub Jerabek. In their place are Pheonix Copley, Nic Dowd and other depth players from within the organization.
General Manager Brian MacLellan made two three big moves this offseason. First, MacLellan traded Grubauer and Brooks Orpik to the Colorado Avalanche for a 2018 2nd round pick at this year’s NHL Draft in June. The Avalanche signed Grubauer to a three-year extension and bought-out Orpik’s final year of his contract– keep that in mind in a few minutes.
MacLellan’s next big move this offseason was taking care of RFA Tom Wilson. Wilson signed a six-year extension worth $5.167 million per season that’ll keep him in a Caps sweater through the 2023-24 season, despite producing 35 points in 78 games played on a line with Evgeny Kuznetsov and Alex Ovechkin.
In 391 career NHL games since entering the league in 2013-14, he has 104 points (35 goals, 69 assists). That’s .266 points per game, for anyone keeping track at home.
Based on his playing style, Wilson draws comparisons to Boston Bruins winger, Brad Marchand. In Marchand’s first five years in the league (300 games played, 2009-14), he had 186 points (92 goals, 94 assists). That’s .620 points per game, for the record.
If you take into account that Marchand’s first season in the league was only 20 games in 2009-10 and add on the 2014-15 season (77 games played) to his numbers to truly reflect Wilson’s first five full-seasons, you get 228 points in 377 games from 2009-15 for Marchand. That’s only .605 points per game– a difference of .015 points per game in 77 additional games.
Regardless, up through this point in Wilson’s career, his “comparable” has had more points per game. Playoffs be damned.
Marchand had 39 points in his first four years of postseason play (2011-14, 66 games played). Wilson had five career postseason points in 41 career Stanley Cup Playoff games prior to 2018 (Wilson appeared in at least three playoff games in every postseason run except for 2014– zero playoff games played).
Including Washington’s Cup winning run, Wilson has 20 career playoff points in 62 games.
Once again, that’s a .591 points per game measure for Marchand in postseason play from 2011-14 and only .323 points per game for Wilson in his entire career’s worth of postseason action (2012-18).
Marchand broke into the league at 21-years-old. He’s now 30. Wilson entered the NHL as a 19-year-old and is now 24.
The only point to takeaway here is Wilson’s contract extension is a big bet on behalf of MacLellan. Luckily, if things work out, MacLellan will look like a genius for locking up Wilson through the first few years of potential unrestricted free agency.
But if things go south, not only will this contract be ridiculed, but it could prove difficult to move, despite not including a no-trade-clause. At $5.167 million per season, it’s not a terrible cap hit, but it’s certainly one in which Washington would likely have to retain some salary if they were ever to move Wilson.
Oh and about Orpik– he signed a one-year, $1.000 million contract with the Capitals shortly after free agency began and the defender wasn’t receiving many offers. The league reviewed MacLellan’s process of trading the veteran NHLer, Colorado’s buyout and Washington’s new deal and deemed it was not circumventing the collective bargaining agreement.
So Washington remains an unlikely Stanley Cup contender by default, having become titleholder to the term “defending champion” in addition to the retention of (without doing the actual math) 95% of the Cup-winning roster. The question remains, can they repeat?
Or more accurately, can they do what their biggest rival– the Pittsburgh Penguins– most recently did in 2016 and 2017– in 2019?
Offseason Grade: B+
It could’ve been an “A-“, but then the Caps just had to sign Tom Wilson at that length and term without having any proof of being an effective scorer in the regular season and playoffs.
For all intents and purposes, Wilson got lucky in the postseason like how Devante Smith-Pelly got lucky and went on a hot streak matching his goal scoring output (seven goals in 75 games) from the regular season in this year’s playoffs (seven goals in 24 playoff games).
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