great trade

Neal is probably bringing back a 1st round and more at the deadline, even without taking on Orpik's bad contract. Caps would have to add to this deal for Vegas

Not a good deal for the Caps. Leaves their defense really weak.

Doesn't Orpik do that all on his own? not to mention crushing their cap situation

Orpik is more of a hindrance then a help, ask most Caps fan they'll say they'd be happy to see him go plus Djoos proved he's NHL ready last year when playing for Hershey having the 2nd most points by any defender in the AHL

I'd love to bring in Neal, but it won't happen for a couple reasons. One, Bowey is going to be a big part of our defense for a while. We need to keep him. Also, it totally wrecks our defense for this season. There's no point in trading for more scoring if it hurts your defense this badly. Last thing, we need to keep our first round picks. Keeping quality youngsters cycling through our system is essential if we are going to be successful with our retool

First, Orpik isn't a hindrance - his contract is. He's strong defensively, which makes him a suitable (although overpaid) 3rd pair dman - as opposed to having 2 untested rookies as the 3rd pair, or a rookie and an AHLer like Ness or Chorney. Second, Djoos should be up regardless of whether Orpik is here, and another prospect dman (Bowey or Hobbs?) should be as well.

A bad contract is a negative factor, this is the salary cap era and the Caps are paying Orpik over 7% of their cap to be a bottom 3 defender and a guy who offers zero PP ability and has seen a declining PK role. Not to mention the fact that he was down right terrible in the playoffs last year. If Orpik was on the open market he'd be lucky to get a 1 year $2M deal, and most of that is in the hopes that he'd bounce back, not based on a repeat of what we saw in the postseason. The Caps are on the hook for an additional year at $5.5M, which is really rough.

I agree with all of that, but it is irrelevant to my point, which is that replacing Orpik with Ness, Chorney, or one of the rookies right now would leave an already weakened defensive corps even weaker. I'm fine with getting rid of Orpik, as long as he's replaced and the Caps don't have to lose a ridiculous amount to do so.

Vegas currently has 26M in cap space for the 2018 trade deadline, and 58M in projected cap space for the 18-19 season (https://www.capfriendly.com/teams/goldenknights). Orpik for Neal adds $0.5M, so cap hit is a non-issue, from Vegas' perspective. Each played about 17:40 per game last year. Orpik did so on a team he just helped win back to back president's trophies. Those go to the best team in the league over an 82 game season. Orpik started a majority of his shifts in the defensive zone, and wound up with a plus/minus of +32, while landing 181 body checks and blocking 132 shots (https://www.hockey-reference.com/players/o/orpikbr01.html). Neal managed to score 23 goals, five of them on the powerplay, and posted a -10 and 82 hits (https://www.hockey-reference.com/players/n/nealja01.html), for the 8th place team in the Western Conference. Then, in the playoffs, he put up nine points in 22 games, and went -8. I don't think the Caps open up a hole in their excellent defense to add a somewhat productive winger who is a big defensive liability.

If injuries open up cap space, I could imagine the Caps renting a veteran like Neil at the trade deadline to play third line minutes, but they don't have any room for him on their top power play unit, so they're not likely to overpay. Maybe a 2nd or a 3rd round pick for the pending UFA, if Vegas is unable to extend his contract. Probably another team is more desperate for a couple goals, and offers more. The Caps' GM, MacLellan, tends to announce what he's planning to do. This year he says he's getting his team younger and faster. Vegas has a lot of players who fit that mould. I could see MacLellan pursuing Miller, McNabb, Marchesault... and paying market value to make a lasting addition to their club.

The only way the Caps trade Orpik for a declining forward on a pending UFA contract is if they somehow believe they can keep Carlson and add Tavares. Even in that wild dream, Bowey is still counted on to become an NHL regular, in order to make the salary cap work, and is untradeable due to a lack of depth at RHD. Vegas can afford to bank a bunch of LHD's as a scarce resource to make long-term advantageous trades. Washington wants to win right away, before Ovechkin gets any older, so they need to keep a good balance of left and right handed blue liners.