Équipe: 2022-23 Capitals de Washington

Date de création initiale: 13 juill. 2022

Publié: 13 juill. 2022

Mode - plafond salarial: Basique

I think the Caps are probably done for the day after the Brown trade. There could still be a larger move coming later in the offseason once they get more clarity on Backstrom and Hagelin's status, but for now I will assume this is the roster.

I get people being slightly underwhelmed with the dreams of Gaudreau or Kadri with Backstrom out the entire year, but this was another A+ day from MacLellan. The difference between Kuemper -- a top 5 goalie in the league the past 3 years -- and Samsonov/Vanacek is much larger than a lot of people realize imo. Connor Brown is another great pickup, who is a legitimate top 6 winger with good underlying numbers at a very good cap hit and only cost a future second. Gustafsson is a perfectly fine 6/7d and worst case scenario they bury him completely in Hershey.

Is this team the truly elite president's trophy contender that it was from ~2014-2019? Not at all. But, the defense and goaltending is sneakily very good, and Brown gives the forward group just enough to not be completely terrible until Wilson gets back, especially if McMichael takes the step a lot of us think he can. It won't be quite the cakewalk to a playoff spot it was last year when they were basically in by Thanksgiving, but do I think three of Pittsburgh, Boston, NYI, OTT, NJ, DET, BUF are definitively better than this team? Absolutely not. If things do come off the rails, they have a lot of very good expiring assets to move at the deadline, and the long contract for Kuemper doesn't really matter as they truly will be horrible years 3-5 anyways.

A long way of saying people should be a lot more optimistic about this team, and give MacLellan the credit he is due for continuing to be one of the best GMs in the league.