Although Washington’s offseason roster alterations have been underway at full steam for a couple of weeks now, Monday was another big day in the ongoing restructuring of the team’s roster and its expected lineup for the upcoming 2024-25 season.
Caps’ president and general manager Brian MacLellan has been highly active over the last two weeks, swinging a quartet of deals that brought center Pierre-Luc Dubois, winger Andrew Mangiapane and goaltender Logan Thompson to the District, and added a second-round pick to the Capitals’ quiver for the 2024 NHL Draft in Vegas this past weekend. As the free agent emporium opened for business at noon on Monday, MacLellan turned his attention to the Washington blueline.
MacLellan added a pair of top four defenders on Monday, making a swap to add the first one and then wading into the free agent waters to add another. He put what appear to be the final touches of the team’s 2024-25 roster in place with a pair of bottom-six wingers via free agency later in the day, finishing off one of the busiest two-week stretches in recent franchise history in terms of players coming and going.
Washington sent blueliner Nick Jensen – the team’s second-longest tenured defenseman in D.C. – to the Ottawa Senators along with the Caps’ third-round pick in 2026 in exchange for 26-year-old defenseman Jakob Chychrun. Chychrun, a first-round (16th overall) selection of the Arizona Coyotes in the 2016 NHL Draft, appeared in all 82 games for the Sens last season, totaling 14 goals, 27 assists, 41 points and 60 PIM.
Ottawa was seeking a right-handed defenseman – an area of depth for Washington – and the Caps were aiming to stimulate their offense from the blueline, which was relatively dormant last season.
Over the course of his eight-year NHL career, Chychrun has amassed 467 games played, 76 goals, 140 assists, 216 points and 308 PIM. He has reached the double-digit level in goals scored in three of his eight season and has twice eclipsed 40 points in a season. Chychrun averaged 2:41 in power play ice time per game last season, and his total average ice time has been over 20 minutes in each of the last seven seasons.
Since the start of the 2017-18 season, Chychrun has averaged 22:06 per game in ice time, ranking 50th among all NHL defensemen over that span. He is heading into the final season of a six-year extension he signed with Arizona in November of 2018. Chychrun’s cap hit for 2024-25 is $4.6 million. Chychrun’s father Jeff had an eight-season career of his own as an NHL defenseman from 1986-94 after being a second-round choice of the Philadelphia Flyers in the 1984 NHL Entry Draft.
Soon after the Chychrun trade was announced, the Caps made one of their biggest free agent signings of the last decade, inking right-handed defenseman Matt Roy to a six-year deal with an annual cap hit of $5.75 million. The last time the Caps signed any unrestricted free agent to a deal of six or more years in term was 10 years ago when they lured defenseman Matt Niskanen to the District with a seven-year deal.
Roy, a 29-year-old Detroit native who played his collegiate hockey at Michigan Tech, was originally a seventh-round choice (194th overall) of the Los Angeles Kings in the 2015 NHL Draft. Following an apprenticeship of just over a hundred games with AHL Ontario, Roy ascended to the NHL for good in 2018-19. Over six seasons with the Kings, Roy has totaled 24 goals, 82 assists, 106 points, and 118 PIM.
With Los Angeles in 2023-24, Roy averaged over 20 minutes a night in average ice time for the second time in his career, and his 2:51 nightly average in shorthanded ice time ranked 23rd in the League last season. Despite being the 67th defenseman drafted in 2015, Roy ranks eighth in regular season NHL games played (369) among the blueliners culled from the ’15 NHL Draft.
MacLellan then set his sights on a couple of new linemates for veteran center Nic Dowd, adding unrestricted free agent wingers Brandon Duhaime and Taylor Raddysh. The 27-year-old Duhaime signed a two-year pact that carries an annual salary cap hit of $1.85 million, and the 26-year-old Raddysh signed a one-year deal at $1 million.
Duhaime is the son of Trevor Duhaime, who was Washington’s ninth-round pick (190th overall) in the 1991 NHL Entry Draft. The elder Duhaime had a brief pro career but never played in the NHL.
Brandon Duhaime is a 27-year-old native of Coral Springs, Fla. who was originally drafted by Minnesota in the fourth round (106th overall) in the 2016 NHL Draft. He played three seasons at Providence College and two seasons at AHL Iowa before matriculating to the NHL with the Wild in 2021-22. After nearly three seasons with the Wild, Duhaime was dealt to Colorado ahead of the March trade deadline this year. In three NHL seasons, Duhaime has totaled 20 goals, 20 assists, 40 points and 234 PIM in 211 regular season contests in the League.
Over the last three seasons with the Wild, Duhaime’s average of 14.84 hits/60 was tops among all Minnesota skaters with at least 75 games played over that span.
Raddysh is the younger brother of Tampa Bay defenseman Darren Raddysh. A native of Caledon, Ont., Taylor Raddysh was Tampa Bay’s second-round choice (58th overall) in the 2016 NHL Draft. Raddysh had three successful seasons with AHL Syracuse before reaching the NHL with the Bolts in 2021-22. Late in his rookie NHL season, he was dealt to the Blackhawks in the swap that sent Brandon Hagel to Tampa Bay.
In his three seasons in the NHL, Raddysh has totaled 36 goals, 37 assists, 73 points and 48 PIM in 225 games. He averaged over 16 minutes a night in his 172 games with Chicago, with an average of 2:34 per game in power play ice time. The right-handed shooting Raddysh netted 20 goals with the Hawks in 2022-23, with seven of those goals coming on the power play.
Finally, the Caps took care of a lot of in-house business as well, extending a handful of free agents from within the organization. First and foremost, the Caps have resigned restricted free agent center Connor McMichael to a two-year contract extension worth $4.2 million, a deal that will carry an annual salary cap hit of $2.1 million.
Washington’s first-round choice in the 2019 NHL Draft, the 23-year-old McMichael established career bests in every offensive category last season, and he finished fifth among Caps’ forwards in shorthanded ice time per game (1:05). McMichael’s average of 15:59 total ice time per game ranked sixth among Washington forwards last season.
The Caps also resigned three members of the Calder Cup champion Hershey Bears. Right wing Ethen Frank signed a two-year extension that is a two-way deal in year one and a one-way deal in 2025-26. Defenseman Chase Priskie signed a one-year, two-way contract extension and goaltender Mitchell Gibson signed a one-year, two-way contract extension.
The Caps have officially placed Nicklas Backstrom on long-term injured reserve to keep within the NHL’s offseason parameters, which permit teams to exceed the salary cap – set at $88 million for the upcoming season – by as much as 10 percent. With the flurry of moves over the last two weeks, Washington’s roster is significantly younger than recent seasons.
Caps’ captain Alex Ovechkin will celebrate his 39th birthday in September, and veteran right wing T.J. Oshie will turn 38 in December. Blueliner John Carlson and center Nic Dowd are both 34, and defenseman Trevor van Riemsdyk turns 33 this summer. Right wing Tom Wilson and goaltender Charlie Lindgren are both 30, but each of the seven players Washington has added over the last two weeks – and the rest of the players in the team’s likely lineup for 2024-25 – is under 30.
