Washington GM Chris Patrick is expected to shop for forwards and defensemen with a renewed confidence about the team’s window to compete for the Stanley Cup.
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Last summer, Chris Patrick was frustrated.
The Washington Capitals’ general manager knew his team needed an upgrade at forward and made a push to sign Nikolaj Ehlers, the top winger on the market, when free agency opened in July. Ehlers took several days to make his decision and ultimately chose the Carolina Hurricanes over the Capitals.
While Washington waited for Ehlers to choose, Patrick and the rest of the front office had to sit and watch as player after player signed with other teams. The Capitals didn’t have enough cap space to both sign Ehlers and make other significant moves; they had to wait to know whether Ehlers was coming before they could do much else, and by then, the pool of available players was limited.
Just shy of a year later, Patrick came out swinging before free agency even began. Washington had north of $20 million in cap space to work with, so Patrick was able to cast a wide net and get involved on several players at once.
On Tuesday, the Capitals traded for winger Jordan Kyrou from St. Louis. On Wednesday, they executed a sign-and-trade with Buffalo that brought them winger Alex Tuch, who would’ve been the top player available if he’d gone to free agency.
“We were aggressive in the guys we missed on [last year]. Sometimes, it just kind of works out that way,” Patrick said Saturday after the NHL draft concluded. “That was kind of my concern going into this summer. You have all these pieces now, you’ve made some hard decisions to trade guys to get assets to hopefully use in deals, and you can make a really good offer to St. Louis for Kyrou and he might say, ‘I don’t want to come to Washington.’ And we’d just have to live with it.
“Sometimes it goes your way and sometimes it doesn’t. We’re going enjoy the fact that we got a couple to go our way this year, and keep going forward.”
Washington included its own first-round pick, No. 16 overall, in the package for Kyrou, but was still able to select center Oliver Suvanto at No. 18 overall Friday night with the pick it received from Anaheim in the John Carlson trade. The Capitals wrapped up the draft Saturday by taking winger Tyus Sparks in the fourth round, defenseman Brian McFadden in the fifth round and center Logan Stuart in the seventh.
The moves for Tuch and Kyrou, though, well overshadowed what Washington did in the draft.
“We’ve been trying to add top-six level talent on the wings,” Patrick said. “To do that, it gives a more skilled mix to our top six. It gives [Coach Spencer Carbery] more options on how to craft a lineup. I think we’re going to be a pretty balanced team, top to bottom, and I think it allows Carbs to have four good lines that can all score goals.”
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Kyrou and Tuch both had control over their destination, Kyrou through a full no-trade clause and Tuch because he was about to be a free agent. The sign-and-trade allowed Buffalo to get a fifth-round draft pick for him, a minimal payment but more than the Sabres would have gotten if Tuch had simply left in free agency.
“I just thought that I could bring something to the table that helps propel the Capitals to the ultimate goal,” Tuch said Friday. “The excitement levels from Chris and Spencer were incredible, and it just got me really excited. … I wanted to go to a team that’s going to be super competitive for a very long time, because I think I’m in the prime of my career.”
Patrick expects to be shopping for both forwards and defensemen Wednesday when free agency opens, with a particular emphasis on defensemen while Rasmus Sandin recovers from a torn ACL.
But after making two significant moves to reshape the forward group this week, Patrick and the Capitals have a renewed confidence about their window of contention for the Stanley Cup.
“These are moves for the next several years in the future as well, where I think we’ve got a really good core group of players for the next several years,” Patrick said. “We have a chance to be a contending team for a while here, so we want to make sure we added guys to help complement that group.”
And while Alex Ovechkin’s impending decision on his NHL future looms large in the minds of Capitals fans, players and management alike, Patrick was clear that the decisions he made this week shouldn’t be taken as a hint, one way or the other, as to how Ovechkin is leaning.
It’s expected that Ovechkin’s decision will come sometime in July.
“Alex is a really competitive person and he wants to win,” Patrick said. “He definitely wanted to see what we did here in this offseason to help inform his decision, so I think this will help give him some more information to make his decision on. …
“I’m making the moves for what I think our team needs, what our hockey ops group thinks our team needs and how to make us the best team possible either with Alex or without Alex in the lineup.”
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