From the day Rasmus Sandin first stepped onto the ice for the Capitals, the team knew it had landed a core piece of its defense for years to come. But a little more than two years after that debut, it’s clear that Sandin is evolving into a different defenseman altogether from the one Washington obtained from Toronto just over two years ago.
Two years ago this month, on March 4, 2023 in San Jose, Sandin made his Caps debut against the Sharks. Days earlier, while the Caps were in the middle of a California road trip just ahead of the NHL’s trade deadline, Washington obtained Sandin from Toronto in exchange for a first-round pick the Caps acquired from Boston about a week earlier.
Sandin debuted with a flourish, picking up three helpers and skating 21:40 – five minutes over his nightly career average over all his time in Toronto – as the Caps drubbed the Sharks, 8-3. The offense kept coming, too. In his first four games in a Washington sweater, Sandin had three multi-point games, adding up to a goal and eight points altogether.
“It was insane,” says Sandin of those first several games with his new team. “And I know I can play some offense, but maybe not the Erik Karlsson type of offense, but there's not many guys that can do that. But yeah, I remember when I got here, and the points just kept rolling. [Alex Ovechkin] was on a heater, and I just kept giving him the puck. I felt like he scored on every single pass I gave to him.
“But I think it was just a fresh start. I think I could just build from zero coming in. I got a lot of belief from the coaching staff that was here at that point, and they just wanted me to go out and have fun. And the guys that were here, they made it a lot of fun for me, and the points just kept rolling. I've never had a stint like that in my life, not even in junior. But I kind of knew that was going to cool off after a bit. Putting up two or three points a game for a year, I knew that wasn't very believable. But yeah, I'm happy I'm here and just love being a Capital.”
That’s very much a two-way street.
Two years after joining the Caps, the personable defenseman is a prime example of a player who flourished with a change of scenery, and in being seen with the fresh eyes of a new organization. His rise coincides with the team’s own ascension; Sandin came to the Caps at a rare low point in the team’s recent history. And without that low point, the deal for Sandin may have never taken place.
For Washington, the 2022-23 season began with the team missing key players Nicklas Backstrom and Tom Wilson because of offseason surgeries; both returned soon after the turn of the calendar. The Caps got to that turn of the calendar in a playoff position, but they lost top defenseman John Carlson to a fractured skull in late December, and his absence for half that season was ultimately one the team could not recover from.
When the Caps laid an egg in the Stadium Series game against Carolina in mid-February of 2023, the handwriting on the wall became clear. Mired in their longest regulation losing streak in nearly a decade, the Caps’ hockey operations department wisely opted to sell as the trade deadline drew near.
On Feb. 23, 2023, the Caps moved longtime left-handed defenseman Dmitry Orlov and fourth-line fixture Garnet Hathaway to Boston in exchange for three draft choices, one from each of the first three rounds of the NHL Draft. Less than a week later, the Caps packaged that first-round pick and veteran defenseman Erik Gustafsson and received Sandin from Toronto in return.
Sandin joined the Capitals as a 22-year-old who had amassed 140 games worth of NHL experience scattered over parts of four NHL seasons, but his average ice time in Toronto was just 16:40 per game; that’s third pairing deployment. With Carlson still working his way back to health, Sandin logged well over 20 minutes in each of his first nine games with the Caps. Once Carlson returned to active duty after missing half a season with the skull fracture, he resumed his longtime role as the main minute muncher on Washington’s back end, and Sandin settled into a more normal role over the season’s final month.
That summer, the Caps hired Spencer Carbery as their head coach. As an assistant coach with Toronto, Carbery came to Washington with a lot of familiarity with the Swedish blueliner.
“He’s an elite young defenseman in the National Hockey League,” said Carbery in September of 2023, after the second day of his first training camp as Caps head coach. “He’s incredible with the puck, moves very, very well laterally, and he has that almost unteachable poise to him that skilled defensemen have. So, in that offensive area of the game, he is very accomplished in that department.
“And now, how does he become a 30-minute a night, play in every situation, can penalty kill a little bit, can obviously run a power play, can play against other teams’ top six, no problem [player]? That’s where I’ll work with him and Mitch Love will work with him, and that’s where we want to see his growth. And as a young defenseman, two things. One, it’s really, really hard in this League. And two, it usually takes time, and reps and games. That’s Sandy’s goal; he wants to be a top caliber defenseman in the National Hockey League, and in order to do that, you’ve got to be able to play in every situation, and you can’t be one-dimensional.”
Nearly two full seasons after Carbery made those comments, the transformation is well underway and time, reps and games have made Sandin into a core piece of the Washington blueline for seasons to come. Sandin needed less than two full seasons with which to surpass his Toronto games played total with Washington, and two years down the road from the deal that brought him to D.C., Sandin is typically slotted on the left side of Washington’s top defense pairing with John Carlson.
“He's playing at a high level with John right now as a pair,” says Carbery now. “We've left them together for a significant amount of time now. The biggest area that I've seen from my days with him in Toronto is he's really grown into a well-rounded NHL defenseman that can give you really [high] quality minutes on both sides of the puck. And that that's been an impressive evolution, because at the beginning of his career, he was looked at as a very offensive [defenseman], undersized a little bit, and was going to run your first unit power play and going to be a point producer, but probably not going to be able to defend at a really high level and play against other teams’ best offensive players.
“That was early in his career, and he's flipped that to being able to play on both sides of the puck at an extremely high level, bring some offensive ability at 5-on-5, can play on the power play when called upon, and then he can play against anybody's top lines and defend well. His gaps and his stick and his closing and his intelligence to defend have grown so much, and so now you've got a player.”
Sandin was the 29th player – and 13th defenseman – chosen in the first round of the 2018 NHL Draft. Ten years earlier, Carlson was the 27th player – and 12th defenseman – chosen in the first round of the 2008 NHL Draft.
“It shows you his IQ in figuring out what it takes to find your way,” says Carlson of his blueline partner. “And he still has that prowess, that skill, that offensive ability that we saw on display in a different type of role that shows his defensive capabilities and his breakouts. And as the year goes on, I think you’ll see more of his offense, too. He’s just getting a good feel for his role on the team and being comfortable making great plays like he has been.”
When Sandin came to the Capitals, Carlson was still sidelined with injury, and Peter Laviolette was in his final quarter of a season as the Caps’ bench boss. For the first time in a decade and a half, the Caps were sellers at the trade deadline.
But rather than seeking draft capital in trades at that deadline, the Caps opted to obtain Sandin, who was very much still a prospect in the making.
“When I had Lavi and [assistant coach Kevin McCarthy] and those guys, I was here for such a short time,” Sandin recalls. “I think I played 19 games that year, and the team was in a different spot, obviously. When I got here, they just told me to go out, have fun, play your game, and we’ll go from there. And then obviously last year to this year has been a big change, too, and I think my role has changed a little bit in that sense.
“With Lavi and Kato, it was such a short time that I barely got to know them. I liked them a lot in the 19 games I had them, but having these guys for a longer period of time now, there’s a lot of things that they can help you with and evaluate your game with. And they’ve been doing a tremendous job with me especially. Individually, they’ve been helping me a lot, especially with playing away from the puck and stuff like that. I’ve taken more of a defensive role than maybe in previous years, and it’s changed for sure, absolutely.”
As Carbery stated quite early in his tenure, he and Mitch Love would be working with Sandin on elevating, shaping and rounding out his game, and nearly two full seasons into the process, the results are strong.
“He's a mature 25-year-old in terms of understanding the game,” says Love of Sandin. “He's got a high level of hockey IQ; he's an intelligent hockey player. I think the biggest thing with him – and he was here before I got here, briefly – is he came here, and he sees John Carlson, right? He sees some of these veteran defensemen that have played in the league a long time, that are slotted in certain roles on each team, and I think he's really grabbed a lot of that, especially from John. They play a lot with each other. John's a smart guy; he's seen it all. So I think the maturity of his game has evolved by the people he's been around.”
After skating with the AHL Toronto Marlies as an 18-year-old in 2018-19, Sandin cracked the Maple Leafs’ opening night roster as a 19-year-old in 2019-20. He split the next three seasons between the Leafs and the Marlies, and he was limited to only 10 games in total during the pandemic-abbreviated season of 2020-21, missing a chunk of the season with a foot injury.
In the five seasons in which he skated for the Leafs, Sandin never played more than 52 games. As the trade deadline for his fifth season approached, he was dealt to Washington. Looking back on it now, the deal for Sandin has augured a new era of Caps hockey, resuscitating an aging team with a much-needed injection of youth. That transformation has continued since.
“As far as Rasmus’ development, I think he's done a really good job at understanding the need to have a complete game,” says Caps senior vice president and general manager Chris Patrick. “He can't just be an offensive guy, puck moving guy, and he's worked really hard on the defensive side of the game and his detail there has gotten better, month-to-month, week-to-week, game-to-game, to the point where he's just become a really dependable, two-way defenseman. I think he defends and brings offense, and I think he has an impact at both ends of the rink.
“And again, when we talk about things working out as good or better than you hope, when we were talking about him at the time [of the trade] with Toronto, and we were talking about with our group internally about what he could become and what's our projection for him, I think the defensive side of his game developing the way it has is has definitely worked out better than we probably could have hoped. And I think it's been a big credit to him for putting the work in and being open-minded and not saying, ‘No, I'm an offensive guy, I need to play on the power play.’ He just goes out and plays his role and does a good job with it. He has been a really low maintenance, hard-working guy.”
The remaking/retooling of the Capitals over the last couple of years has been a gradual process. Even with the offseason signing of a 25-year-old Dylan Strome in the summer of 2022, the Caps entered the 2022-23 season as the NHL’s oldest team, with an average age of 30.1, and with 17 of the 26 rostered players (including players on IR) aged 30 or older.
Two years later, when Washington started out the 2024-25 campaign, it had trimmed its average age to 28.6 years and only seven of its 23 rostered players were aged 30 or older.
In adding Sandin less than a week after trading away Orlov, the aging Caps were able to turn back the clock by nearly a decade on that roster slot. They’ve since gotten even younger overall with many of the moves they’ve made in the two years since, and the team has climbed its way back to standings relevance this season.
In 52 games with the Leafs prior to the trade that season, Sandin totaled four goals and 20 points. In just 19 games with the Caps at the tail end of the campaign, he managed three goals and 15 points while averaging 22:59 per game in ice time. That ice time figure was exactly five minutes more than Sandin had averaged (17:59) with the Leafs that season.
During his tenure in Washington, Sandin has averaged nearly four minutes more per night in average ice time, and his nightly 5-on-5 average in 154 games with the Caps is 18:47, the highest of any of the team’s blueliners since he arrived in the District. With Toronto, Sandin logged only 15:06 in nightly average ice time at 5-on-5.
“I think that’s him taking an onus on himself and being complete and not just known for his offense, and I think that’s great,” says Carlson. “You can see that for his size, he’s an extremely physical defenseman. And his footwork has obviously been great, but he’s learned to use that as a supreme asset in defending. And I think that’s hard for a lot of players to handle, and I expect him to just continue to get better. You’ve really got to have the brain, and he’s got the brain for the game. That just tells me that the more he sees and the more experience he gets, he’ll be able to use all of his assets in different ways to just keep getting better and better.”
Not only is Sandin skating more minutes with the Caps, he is logging more difficult minutes and he is not being sheltered in his deployment as he was during his days with the Leafs. With Toronto in those 52 games before the trade in 2022-23, Sandin saw just over half (51.61%) of his usage on offensive-zone draws. In his 19 games with Washington that season, the figure climbed even higher, to 60.71%.
But in working with Love and Carbery to become a more well-rounded rearguard these last two seasons, Sandin has seen his deployment shift drastically to the defensive zone. Last season, he was at 46.53% in his own end. The figure has dropped to 35.19% this season, fourth lowest in the NHL among defensemen who’ve logged at least 1,100 minutes at 5-on-5 this season.
Even with that extreme defensive-zone-leaning usage, Sandin’s other analytics remain positive. Although he ranks 57th among the League’s top 60 minutemen at 5-on-5, Sandin’s unadjusted Corsi share of 50.05% ranks 36th among the same group, and his 57.69% share of goals scored ranks 10th.
Of the NHL’s top 60 minute-munchers at 5-on-5 this season, Sandin is the only one who sports a Caps sweater.
“I feel like there's only certain players that don't really have to care too much about playing defense, because they're that good offensively, that even if they let in one goal, they can put up two goals,” says Sandin. “They kind of even it out with how good they are playing offense. I'm not that guy, so I have to learn to play both sides.
“And in my mind in the beginning, when you're coming in as a young guy, everyone that comes into the NHL today wants to be a guy that puts up a lot of points and plays offensively because they want to be offensive guys. But that's not always the case for most of the players.
“For me, I knew that my defensive play wasn't the best, so it's something I really had to tune in on and the coaches have been helping me a lot, too. I feel like that's where I've been taking a big step since I got here, and also with my skating, in feeling faster, feeling better trained, better conditioned, and helping me all over the ice. And then obviously, the trust that you get from your teammates and from your coaches is helping a lot as well.”
Almost exactly a year after his Washington debut, Sandin signed a five-year, $23 million contract extension that runs through the 2028-29 season. Along with forwards P-L Dubois, Aliaksei Protas and Tom Wilson, defenseman Matt Roy and goaltender Logan Thompson, Sandin is currently one of six Caps under contract through at least the next four seasons.
“Right when he got here, we could tell he had a bright future ahead of him and we were lucky to have him,” said Wilson after Sandin inked his extension last year. “He is a guy that brings consistency to the back end and he has a lot of upside potential. He can make things happen back there, and he’s a really good, solid teammate and a great guy.
“And I think he fits the mold. A lot of guys come here and they love it; it’s a great group of guys. I’m pretty pumped for Sandy, he’s a guy that cares a lot and is always working on his game and trying to help the team. We’re excited to have him; it’s always great news to hear that.”
Perhaps the best news is that as a player who just turned 25 earlier this month, and who is still a few games shy of 300 for his NHL career, there’s still upside for Sandin’s game and he is still a season or two removed from his prime years.
“I think for me personally – and this is stuff I would say to Rasmus all the time – there is still another level for his game,” says Love. “I mean, he's had a good season. He's become a well-rounded, trustworthy type player for me back there, in terms of playing against other team’s top players, because he competes hard, even though he's not a very big guy. He's smart with his stick. He blocks shots, he does the little intangibles some defensemen don't want to do, but there's still another level for me to his offensive game.
“Do I think he's going to be a 60-point defenseman in the NHL? I don't know. I'm being honest with you. He'd be honest with you. But I think he's a guy who could get to 35-40 points consistently. He’s got to trust his feet, creating shot lanes. He's got to be more of a shot threat. And I know he doesn’t trust his shot at times – and it’s stuff we’ve talked about – but there is still another gear there. I have liked the evolution of his offensive game in terms of joining the attack, being that second wave. He's more of a pass first guy than a shot guy, which we’ve got to kind of get a little more out of. But his confidence of being part of the offense, and making plays, delaying on entry, finding late people himself, he's come a long way.
“He has taken steps this year, and again, it takes some [defensemen] some time; this is his second organization. He's 25; he's not even really in his prime yet as a player in this league. And when you're in his position and get paid a certain amount of dollars, you’ve got to play against good players. You’ve got to be part of the offense. I know he's not a power play guy for us, but maybe down the road. But he's become a very reliable, trustworthy, responsible player.”
When Carlson was at the same point as Sandin is now – six games shy of 300 for his career – he had totaled 33 goals and 89 assists for 122 points and was a plus-26 while averaging a lofty 22:22 per game in ice time. Sandin has 20 goals and 91 assists – two more than Carlson – for 111 points with a plus-17 while averaging nearly four minutes less (18:38) than his current partner did at the same early juncture of his career.
It's also worth noting that Carlson scored 10 of his goals and recorded 29 of his points on the power play, while Sandin has notched just one power-play goal and 24 power-play points. Under this lens, Sandin has produced very similar 5-on-5 numbers to Carlson with less ice time.
And speaking of time, it’s been flying for Sandin. He was stunned to learn he has been a Capital for a bit more than two years now.
“I didn't know it was two years,” he says. “I feel like it's been maybe one year; it seems like it's been flying by. But that's incredible it's two years already. But it's been great. I feel like I've been maturing a lot as both a player and a person coming here, getting a bigger role, and getting to play every single night; I think that helps. And then obviously, with getting the chance to play with a guy like John, who's been in the League for a very long time and been a stud on this blueline for what, 15 to 20 years.
“I’m learning a lot from the older guys in the room, the coaches have been helping me a lot with my biggest weaknesses that I had when I came here, and I feel like those weaknesses are now starting to maybe become one of the better parts of my game. I feel like I'm taking big steps in playing defense and playing away from the puck. I'm 25, so I feel like I'm still considered young, and I hopefully have a ways to go and get way better still. That's where my mind is at, and for the rest of my career, I want to hopefully learn more every single day from younger and older guys. That's my mindset.”
It's somewhat ironic that Sandin is partnered with Carlson now, because if Carlson hadn’t missed half of that ’22-23 season with a skull fracture, Sandin might not even be a Capital at this point. And even after the deal that brought him to DC, some refinement was needed to make him into the well-rounded, two-way defenseman he is today.
Washington made some good lemonade out of missing the playoffs in 2022-23, it landed Sandin and some other draft capital at the trade deadline and managed to snare Ryan Leonard with the eighth overall pick in the 2023 Entry Draft, the first time the Caps had a single-digit first-round pick since 2007.
“I think they wanted to get younger and get some younger players in,” reflects Sandin on the deal that brought him to the District. “No one really knew if they were going into a complete rebuild, or if they were going to go for it and get some more young players. And then obviously this offseason happened, we got a lot of new players, and everyone has just clicked.
“Now, we have a good mix of older and younger guys. When I came in, [Aliaksei Protas] was here for a bit. [Connor McMichael] came up here last year for the full year again, and Marty [Fehervary] was here, so there's a good mix. But yeah, I just love it here.”
