Washington Capitals post draft

After receiving the Capitals from some poor luck on the team selection lottery round, management was left on the island of misfit toys. Either go with the here and now choosing 30+ year old high end players in Ovi etc, or embrace the suck and attempt to build a core of younger players with upside. While the former is probably the path of least resistance, this GM is never one to shrink from a challenge.

Had we better luck in the team selection round, things would have been different, but it wasn't in the cards.

The high end expensive guys were let go in favor of less costly players or established guys in their prime years. In the case of Carlson, he is just too valuable to let walk. Sealing the decision was when Ottawa decided to essentially keep Debrincat over Stutzle. I hope it works out for them, because we were over the moon seeing Tim sitting there to be selected.

The decision now in the rear view mirror we set about looking for younger players with good size and a clear path to the NHL. Or failing that a player with possible NHL upside from a franchise that due to NHL financial mismanagement will need to backfill the roster with affordable players from the AHL.

Successful long term franchises can be built in a variety of way, but for this team I decided to build from the center position and stack defensemen who can skate and have enough size to clear the crease. The second factor was to draft players who had a few years of contract remaining that wouldn't break the bank so to speak. The unknown issue which concerned me was the drafting style of the other Gms in the league. You guys are a mystery to me, although as the draft unfolded I began to see who had a similar approach to mine.

So players such as Kupari, Hague, Nic Roy, Whitecloud, Trenin and Lindstrom to name a few met the established criteria and so were easy draft choices. In an ideal world I might have taken a better overall player, but the other player was either older, had a minimal contract status or was too expensive. As the draft progressed it became apparent that some Gms modus operandi was unclear so I changed my strategy to optimize younger players with NHL potential and a smoother pathway to making the show. We see this with the selections of players such as Ratcliffe, Jones, Gustafsson and Miromanov. These players may not have a long career but they should get an opportunity to skate more than a few games at the NHL level and hopefully make a case to stick with the big club. I have relatively high hopes for all four of them, especially Miromanov who is a converted forward at the suggestion of “the professor” Igor Larionov.

Finally as the talent pool continued to dry up we started targeting players with an injury history but NHL level skill such as Driedger and Labanc. Then selected players with enough talent to at least be in consideration for NHL roster spots in Hamblin, Kovacevic and perhaps Beaucage. Other players like Josh Brown, Mason Appleton, Jason Dickinson, Halak and Wedgewood were just too valuable to pass on, plus we also needed to fill out the roster so that we would be able to ice a legal hockey team.

So that is our draft in a rather long winded way.

The next step will be to set the roster geared towards the lower end of the cap space, thus ensuring we earn a profit. Perhaps we might even find a motivated GM who will pay a premium for the Caps to take on their albatross contract in exchange for a younger player who fits our model.

Best of luck to us all, unless you are playing Washington in which case I hope you crash and burn