Holtby Trade also gets a 2nd and Carlson trade gets quite a bit more, backstory trade a little bit less but not much, Orpik and Kruger trade is stupid for caps as they have depth in forwards already, karlsson trade doesn’t need to happen but if I were caps maybe throw in Ryan’s contract but that depends on how the look long term

You're right that in this build, keeping Orpik at 7D is fine. IRL, saving 2.5M of cap hit makes space to keep Carlson without even having to trade away Holtby or Backstrom. Or if the Caps are rebuilding, it gives Kruger an audition for a contract for the next year, for free, but it's not essential.

I think this is a fine start to a rebuild. But since a decent ingredient in Ovechkin winning the Richard this year has been playing half the season withe each of Backstrom and Kuznetsov, whoever is hot, then I think that trading Backstrom for picks and kids means trading Ovechkin at the same time or missing out on a ton of potential return.

Rebuilding and renting Karlsson for one year in the same breath, I still don't get. But then, CCG has already pointed out that I am an idiot. So I probably don't deserve an explanation for this question that I have now asked in about twenty different ways: if the Caps are throwing away two or three superstars in all of your builds for picks and prospects, why are they throwing away a handful of picks and prospects to rent Karlsson and squeak into the playoffs next year?

Is a team with six rookie forwards in its opening lineup really enough of a contender to justify that insane rental price?

Even if there's a chance it might be, can't they at least wait until the trade deadline and see that they're not throwing away a top ten pick on a totally wasted rental like, you know, Ottawa probably just did on Duchene?

Unless you are secretly Erik Karlsson or Robert Tomas, I totally don't get what you're going for, in trading both of them to the Caps every week.