Capitals coping with roster turnover

The Washington Capitals are heading into a post-Stanley Cup transition, but without the Stanley Cup.
That's essentially how general manager Brian MacLellan put it when explaining the turnover to the roster over the past few days.

"We spent the last three years building that team to where it was last year and we maxed it out player-wise and salary-wise, and we were expecting to run into some issues here going forward," MacLellan said Monday. "I think it's no different than the teams that have won in the past. We have the same kind of hangover, but we haven't won a championship and we're dealing with it now."
The Capitals took care of their priorities by re-signing potential unrestricted free agent right wing T.J. Oshie (eight years, $46 million) on June 23, potential restricted free agent defenseman Dmitry Orlov (six years, $30.6 million) on June 30, and restricted free agent center Evgeny Kuznetsov (eight years, $62.4 million) on July 2.
But those signings came at a price exceeding the $139 million value of those contracts.
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The Capitals did not have the NHL salary-cap space to bring back any of their other unrestricted free agents and lost right wing Justin Williams (Carolina Hurricanes), and defensemen Karl Alzner (Montreal Canadiens) and Kevin Shattenkirk (New York Rangers) to other teams. Shattenkirk was likely to leave anyway, but the Capitals would have had more interest in bringing back Williams, and perhaps Alzner, if they had the space.
Cap space became even more of an issue after Kuznetsov re-signed. That put the Capitals roster at 15 signed players with $4,656,560 remaining, according to CapFriendly.com, and restricted free agent forward Andre Burakovsky and goalie Philipp Grubauer yet to be re-signed.
That Kuznetsov's NHL salary-cap charge of $7.8 million per season came in a little higher than expected didn't help. MacLellan said Kuznetsov's option to sign to play in Russia for two seasons and then return to the NHL as an unrestricted free agent in 2019-20 gave Kuznetsov leverage, "so we had to comply with his demands."
In desperate need of cap space after that, the Capitals on Sunday traded left wing Marcus Johansson to the New Jersey Devils for a second-round pick and a third-round pick in the 2018 NHL Draft. Moving Johansson's $4,583,333 cap charge left the Capitals with $9,239,893 in cap space, according to CapFriendly.com.
MacLellan said he believed that would be enough to re-sign Burakovsky and Grubauer and to fill out the roster without any additional salary-dumping moves. On Tuesday, Washington signed Burakovsky for two years and $6 million (average annual value of $3 million).

"I think the decision at the end was, do we let Kuznetsov walk to Russia and become a UFA in two years or do we trade Marcus?" he said. "Our priority was to have the best center ice that we could have and do our best to fill in with the left wing spot."
MacLellan pointed out that the Chicago Blackhawks and Pittsburgh Penguins have had to deal with similar departures in recent years. Since winning the Stanley Cup for the second consecutive season on June 11, the Penguins have lost goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury to the Vegas Golden Knights in the NHL Expansion Draft and Chris Kunitz (Tampa Bay Lightning), Nick Bonino (Nashville Predators), Trevor Daley (Detroit Red Wings) and Ron Hainsey (Toronto Maple Leafs) as free agents.
Of course, the Capitals' changes would have been a lot easier for them to take if they were basking in the glow of winning the Stanley Cup, but they could not find a way to get past the Penguins in the Eastern Conference Second Round each of the past two seasons.
"We knew that this point was coming in time where we weren't going to be able to keep everybody and we were going to lose people that we really liked," MacLellan said. "I don't like losing Justin Williams. I didn't want to lose Oshie. We had a lot of good players and a lot of good people here, so it's tough to let them go."
Now the Capitals are entering a transition phase. They're hoping some of their young defensemen can replace Nate Schmidt (expansion draft), Alzner and Shattenkirk, and that rookie forward Jakub Vrana is ready to take over Johansson's spot in their top six.
And perhaps Devante Smith-Pelly or Anthony Peluso, unrestricted free agents who signed a one-year, two-way contract with the NHL minimum salary of $650,000, might pan out as inexpensive depth forwards.
But the Capitals will have to rely even more on their highly paid core players: Alex Ovechkin, Nicklas Backstrom, Matt Niskanen, John Carlson, Braden Holtby, Kuznetsov, Oshie and Orlov.
MacLellan said he believes, "We're a good team still."
"It's just we're maturing," he said. "We're getting a little more top-heavy as a team, like Chicago, like Pittsburgh, and we've got to pay the result for it."