Caps Deal for Dillon
Washington adds a defenseman ahead of the deadline for the sixth straight season
Those two realities collided during the Caps' just completed three-game road trip. Although the deal was announced hours after the team returned from Las Vegas in the wee hours of Tuesday morning, this deal was put together and agreed to during the road trip
Washington sends a second-round pick - obtained from Colorado in the deal for Andre Burakovsky last summer - and a third-rounder (with conditions) to the San Jose Sharks in exchange for blueliner Brenden Dillon. As to the conditions attached to the third-rounder, here they are: the third-round pick is Washington's pick in 2021, unless the Caps win the Stanley Cup this spring. In that event, the third-rounder would become Arizona's third-rounder in the 2020 NHL Draft.
Dillon is a 29-year-old left-handed shot who stands 6-foot-4 and tips the scales at 225 pounds. He is in the final season of a contract that carries an annual salary cap hit of $3.27 million. The Sharks are retaining the maximum 50 percent on Dillon's contract in the deal.
A native of New Brunswick, British Columbia, Dillon started his pro career in the Dallas organization. After playing his junior hockey for WHL Seattle, Dillon signed with the Stars as an undrafted free agent on March 1, 2011. He first ascended to the NHL with Dallas in 2011-12 - getting a one-game trial look - but was in the show for good in 2012-13, playing all 48 games as a rookie in that lockout-abbreviated season.
Dillon's AHL apprenticeship consisted of 123 games with the Texas Stars, and he has now played 588 NHL games with Dallas and San Jose over his nine NHL seasons, totaling 22 goals and 92 assists for 114 points, and being whistled for 553 PIM. This season, Dillon has a goal and 13 points and 83 PIM in 59 games with San Jose. He is averaging 19:22 per night in ice time in the 2019-20 season, and exactly 2:02 of that time per game comes while the Sharks are shorthanded.
Washington was looking to add a top four defenseman to its blueline mix, and Dillon fits the bill. With San Jose this season, he logged the fourth-most minutes among Sharks rearguards, behind the highly touted - and highly-paid - trio of Brent Burns, Erik Karlsson and Marc-Edouard Vlasic.
Throughout most of his career, Dillon has posted strong possession numbers while displaying a high level of physicality. In each of the last four seasons, he has been on the ice for 51.7 percent or better of his team's shot attempts, and he hit a career high of 56.8 percent last season. Dillon is at 52 percent thus far in 2019-20. He leads the Sharks - and ranks eighth in the NHL - with 175 hits this season. Dillon has also displayed a great deal of durability; he has missed only two games in the last four seasons.
Early indications are that the Caps plan to play Dillon on the left side of their top pairing with John Carlson, and that they'll move Michal Kempny down lower on the left side of their depth chart. Kempny is less than a year removed from major surgery to repair a torn hamstring muscle. He suffered that injury in a March 20, 2019 game against the Tampa Bay Lightning and had surgery a couple weeks later. Kempny missed the first eight games of this season while going through a lengthy and arduous six-month rehab in the wake of that injury.
This is the fourth straight February in which Washington has dealt for a defenseman in the midst of a road trip. The Caps were in New York when they made the deal with St. Louis for Kevin Shattenkirk in 2017, they were in Buffalo when they made deals for Kempny in 2018 and Nick Jensen in 2019, and in Arizona when they picked up Dillon.
Washington also added defensemen ahead of the NHL's trade deadline in 2015 (Tim Gleason) and 2016 (Mike Weber), both those deals were made while the Caps were at home. This is the sixth time in as many seasons as the Capitals' general manager that Brian MacLellan has added a blueliner in February.
