When the Caps obtained defenseman Jakob Chychrun from Ottawa in a trade last July 1, they added an eight-year veteran who debuted in the NHL as a teenager in 2016-17 with Arizona, months after the Coyotes drafted him in the first round (16th overall) of the 2016 NHL Draft.
Tuesday morning in Winnipeg, ahead of their Tuesday night tilt with the Jets, the Caps announced the signing of Chychrun to a contract extension for eight more years, a deal that carries an annual salary cap hit of $9 million.
Today’s extension checks off the Caps’ biggest piece of offseason business to get done, and it keeps Washington’s stellar group of top six defensemen together for at least another season. Coming in the wake of extensions for goaltenders Logan Thompson and Charlie Lindgren earlier in 2025, Chychrun’s deal also continues the team’s remarkable run of bringing in players from other organizations and showing them why Washington is a place where they’ll want to remain and thrive as their careers progress.
“It’s just been awesome,” says Chychrun of his first nine months as a Capital. “It’s been a blessing for my wife and I. We have just – from day one – felt so comfortable here, so happy here. The organization is incredible, and obviously a group of guys and what we have here is so special, and I’ve loved working with the coaching staff.
“Everything has just been so great, and we were really hoping to get something done. I think up until a few days ago, talks were pretty slow and pretty quiet, which was also kind of nice, because I wasn’t thinking about it much, because there just wasn’t much going on. And then in the last couple of days, it got done. We’re very happy.”
The Capitals are happy too; that’s how deals of this magnitude get done.
“It did drag on for a while,” says Caps senior vice president and GM Chris Patrick. “We started talking probably in early January with sincerity. A lot of it was there are a lot of highly paid defensemen in the League, and they had their group [of comparables] that they thought were a good fit for Jake, and we had ours, and we were trying to find that middle ground.
“I think it got to a point where – on our side – we’re creeping towards the playoffs here. It’s not something I wanted to go into the playoffs and have this hanging out there as a distraction. It was either time to do it now, or we were going to have to wait until after the playoffs, when the player is now at least a month closer to being an unrestricted free agent. We started to make a more concerted push over the last couple of days to try to get something done, and they were willing to work with us as well, so it was good that we got something done.”
With 18 goals and 25 assists for 43 points in 65 games with the Caps this season, Chychrun – who turns 27 in a week – is enjoying a career year as he enters his prime seasons in the League. He has matched his career high in goals and exceeded previous bests in assists and points.
Chychrun is averaging over 20 minutes a game for the eighth consecutive season, and despite missing 156 games – the equivalent of nearly two full seasons – thus far over the course of what is now nine seasons in the NHL, he still ranks in the top 50 among all NHL defensemen in goals (94, ranks 10th) and points (259, ranks 48th) since the start of his career.
Since the beginning of the 2020-21 season, Chychrun’s 22 power-play goals rank third and his total of 66 goals is tied for third most among all NHL defensemen; only Colorado’s Cale Makar (100) and Nashville’s Roman Josi (81) have more.
“It’s a huge signing for our organization, for the team, for the future,” says Caps coach Spencer Carbery. “He has done an amazing job since coming here at the beginning of the year. He has fit in so seamlessly well with our group, his personality. His skill set is obvious, and so I don’t look past his skill set because he can do a lot of things with his skating, his shot, running a power play, getting up into the rush, beating guys in 1-on-1 situations at the offensive blueline, so that goes without saying. He is an elite skill set defenseman in the National Hockey League.
“What I really appreciate and why I think the deal and the length of it is a great decision, is because he is hungry to win, and he is in a constant pursuit of excellence every single day, individually. Whether that’s looking after his body, whether that’s trying to get better through video and film through coaching, he is coachable. He wants to learn how to defend better, and so I, as a coach, you just think the sky is the limit for players like that. They’re just going to continue to get better and grow, because he has a commitment to it; he wants to do it. And I’ve seen that over the year.”
The deal was announced two days after Chychrun suffered a scary laceration to his wrist in Saturday’s game with Florida. He departed the game in the first period to get stitched up, and he returned to log 16:25 in the game; he also spent six minutes in the penalty box in that contest. Chychrun admitted the injury bothered him the last couple of days, but he also remarked on how much better he felt today, and he is leaning on giving it a go tonight. Carbery pronounced Chychrun a “game time decision.”
For the last 57 games, the Caps have enjoyed the rare luxury of having all their top six defenseman healthy and in the lineup. Washington owns a 38-11-8 record across that span – the best in the League during that stretch – and its average of 2.44 goals against per game over that span ranks second only to Los Angeles (2.44).
Last season, Washington finished near the bottom of the NHL in offensive contributions from the blueline; Caps defensemen combined for 20 goals (31st in the NHL) and 135 points (30th) for an average per game contribution of 1.65 points per game.
Thus far this season – with a dozen games remaining – Washington’s blueliners have chipped in with 34 goals (tied for seventh and led by Chychrun’s 18) and they’ve amassed 182 points, tied with Colorado for most in the NHL. Because the Caps have played one less game than the Avs to this point of the campaign, Washington’s average of 2.6 points per game from its back end is tops in the NHL, and it’s the highest of any group of Caps’ defensemen since 1992-93.
“If you look at our [defense] corps as a whole,” begins Carbery, “and bringing Matt Roy in through free agency, and Chychy and John [Carlson], and Rasmus [Sandin] and Marty [Fehervary] and [Trevor van Riemsdyk], it’s a pretty formidable [defense] corps when you compare it around the League, so we’re excited about that; we feel like it’s a strength.
“If you look at our team last year, we're 30 th in production from defenseman – goals and assists – and now we're second [actually, first] in the National Hockey League. So the growth back there, Chychy is obviously a big part of that. But I think just our group as a whole has really grown and become a strength of our team. And you can point to it as arguably one of the reasons why – what has changed? What’s flipped last year to this year, scoring, production wise, wins and losses wise? That’s a huge part of it, is our [defense] corps.
“It’s been a huge part of our offensive success this year, is the how our [defense] core has played,” Patrick concurs. “And obviously, Jakob has been a big part of that. And not even just the goals and assists, but in getting pucks up to the forwards on the breakouts and through the neutral zone, and putting them in positions where they can attack with speed. I think we're more advanced than maybe we were last year because adding guys like Jakob and Matt [Roy].
“And also – just in this year alone – I feel like Jakob has improved as a player. I think his 200-foot game is better than it was last year and the year before. And so now, besides the offensive ability he has – which we view as elite – he is a guy that can manage the puck and manage the play in his own end well enough to get it going into the offensive zone and start creating some chances. So, seeing that growth in his game, you have to remind yourself, he's only 26 and about to turn 27; not many people are about to hit the UFA market at that age. There’s still a lot of room where he can improve, and we're hoping he'll continue to play the way he has this year for us.”
With Monday’s extension, the Caps have their entire top six blueline under contract for next season.
Nine of the NHL’s current 13 highest salary cap hits among defensemen are for right-handed shooting blueliners. As of today, Chychrun’s cap hit for next season ranks 10th among defensemen, and fifth among lefties, behind Rasmus Dahlin, Zach Werenski, Darnell Nurse and Roman Josi. When Chychrun’s current deal expires at the end of the 2032-33 season, he will be a couple of months beyond his 35th birthday.
Earlier this year, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman announced salary cap projections for the next three seasons, providing guidance for NHL GMs that the cap ceiling will climb to $95.5 million in 2025-26, then to $104 million in 2026-27 and ultimately to $113.5 million in 2027-28. Chychrun’s extension would take up 9.4 percent of Washington’s cap space next season, 8.7 percent the season after that, and would be just a shade under 8 percent in 2027-28, when Chychrun turns 30.
“We were comfortable with where the number ended up,” says Patrick. “You look at the top [defensemen] in the league based on salary, and I think he slots in really well. And all those guys are signed in a lower [salary] cap environment than what we were working with now, having the three-year guidance that we have. It was about finding that number that worked for both Jakob and for us, and then working on the structure stuff after that.”
Washington also has a positive prior experience with a similar recent contract extension.
Seven years ago this summer, less than three weeks after helping the Caps secure the first Stanley Cup championship in their history, John Carlson signed an eight-year extension worth $64 million; that extension took up 10.06 percent of Washington’s cap space in season one of the deal.
Next season, Carlson heads into the final season of that deal. He will turn 36 midway through next season, and he continues to earn every nickel – and then some – that he’s being paid. Seeing Carlson’s growth and improvement over the course of his own eight-year deal made the Caps less wary of signing Chychrun, who is essentially a year younger than Carlson was when he signed his own extension.
And when the deal Chychrun signed today is finished, Chychrun will be younger than Carlson will be when his own eight-year deal is up after next season.
“Yeah, definitely,” says Patrick. “I feel like John Carlson has improved every year on that contract and has really been sch a huge part of our [defense] corps, both from an offensive perspective and from being on the first penalty killing unit. It’s the hardest position in the League – I think – to learn and to really master as a player. And I think at the age of 26 or 27, you’re just starting to scratch the surface. I think you see a lot of defensemen as they get into their thirties, that continue to improve their game and become even more dangerous than they were as 25-year-olds, so we’re hoping the same trend continues here.”
Chychrun’s signing continues a decade-long trend of the Caps bringing in players – many of them with first-round pedigree – from other organizations, and those players subsequently finding the culture and the situation in Washington enough to their liking that they’ve signed an extension to remain with the Caps. Chychrun is at least the 19th player to do so in the last 11 years.
“The fit with our group has been great,” says Patrick of Chychrun. “He – by all accounts – is a really, really good person and a really good teammate. And he has really enjoyed what the team is doing this year, and the position we are in here heading into the playoffs.
“I think him signing here now is a testament to what our team has done and what we’re trying to do here in Washington. And a 26- turning 27-year-old UFA is a bit of a unicorn; he would have had a lot of options available to him this summer, both in teams willing to pay potentially more, or even taking a shorter term deal and then being a free agent again at the age of 30, and really cashing in again. I think the fact that he was willing to put those options aside and sign a long -erm deal with us really speaks to him buying into what we're trying to do here.”
After going through ownership issues in each of his previous NHL stops in Arizona and Ottawa, Chychrun seems to have found his home and his tribe with the Caps, and in less than a year with the organization, he decided to extend his time in the District by eight years without testing the market this summer.
“This has just been such a great experience,” Chychrun reiterates. “And it was something that – if there was a number we were comfortable with – we were more than happy to stay and not trust free agency. I'm really happy with how things went and getting something done as we get towards the end of the season here, and to not have to think about it going into playoffs, and just be able to go out and do everything we can to win.”
