I’d be ok with him getting kubels spot on the top line or Shearys spot so he can get back to the top line.
Speculation: Caps Roster General Discussion (Coaching/FAs/Cap/Lines etc) - 2022-23 Season Part 3: Drop the puck!
- Thread starter AlexModvechkin8
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twabby
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- Mar 9, 2010
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I was perusing the stats (as I do) and I was shocked to see Marcus Johansson is tied for second on the team in goals with 11. Not that Johansson hasn't had a good season, but I don't think the intention was for him to be second in goals a little past the halfway point of the season when he was re-signed last offseason.
I believe @AlexBrovechkin8 has brought his name up many times but Timo Meier is starting to make more and more sense as a big splash TDL candidate that would actually move the needle. Over the past 5 years he's 26th in goals/60 at 5v5, and 32nd in points/60 at 5v5. He's a big offensive playdriver without being deficient defensively.
He has a $6 million cap hit that could fit, especially if Mantha is traded either to SJ or elsewhere. While his QO is prohibitive there is nothing to say they can't agree to a long-term deal that could make sense for both sides. The backend of a long-term deal might be disappointing but Ovechkin and Backstrom will likely be retired at that point and the team in the midst of a rebuild. Either way, an 8-year deal from ages 27-34 still captures several good years so I'd highly consider him as a TDL target with the intention of re-signing.
I think overall they are weaker at center than they are wing but aside from Larkin who I still think is going to re-sign in Detroit, I don't see a center out there that really makes sense.
I believe @AlexBrovechkin8 has brought his name up many times but Timo Meier is starting to make more and more sense as a big splash TDL candidate that would actually move the needle. Over the past 5 years he's 26th in goals/60 at 5v5, and 32nd in points/60 at 5v5. He's a big offensive playdriver without being deficient defensively.
He has a $6 million cap hit that could fit, especially if Mantha is traded either to SJ or elsewhere. While his QO is prohibitive there is nothing to say they can't agree to a long-term deal that could make sense for both sides. The backend of a long-term deal might be disappointing but Ovechkin and Backstrom will likely be retired at that point and the team in the midst of a rebuild. Either way, an 8-year deal from ages 27-34 still captures several good years so I'd highly consider him as a TDL target with the intention of re-signing.
I think overall they are weaker at center than they are wing but aside from Larkin who I still think is going to re-sign in Detroit, I don't see a center out there that really makes sense.
- Aug 12, 2008
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So you went into extreme detail but more or less said what I said. You can give him credit for the drafting and keeping all futures. He never made the hard decisions, or go for it decisions to really go for a cup. Theodore, huet, aging kolzig and then rookie after rookie after rookie in net. Journeyman dmen cast offs whether or old and fading or young and discarded. He never made the moves to solidify the defense or goaltending in ovis prime. It was almost as if he was given instructions to make the Team a great product to watch but don't risk anything in order to win. Just my opinion.think as far as Vegas first draft/acquisitions the Revisionist history is that he knew made all these shrewd moves that no one else saw. He hasnt done that well since that first season. When current gm got control he immediately signed real defenseman and quality forwards that McPhee never did in the ovi era
Misery74
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- Nov 20, 2017
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You simply cannot continually scratch a player making $5.7m. You put yourself at a tremendous competitive disadvantage.
Mantha needs to be played or moved.
Mantha needs to be played or moved.
Hivemind
We're Touched
I don't know why you are panning the Huet addition. Huet was absolutely phenomenal for the Capitals in his short stint here. He helped them steal a playoff spot after their abysmal start to that season. He ultimately priced himself out of returning to DC, and it's lucky he did since he wasn't good afterwards. GMGM did a great job getting Huet's peak play, and then avoided over-committing to him afterwards. Ancient Kolzig wasn't exactly a fixture for a long time in Ovie's tenure, only his first couple seasons in the league prior to the Huet addition. Theodore obviously didn't work out, but I'm also not sure what other goalie you wanted him to go after in 2008. David Aebischer? Jocelyn Thibault? Try to convince a 43 year old Hasek not to return to Europe? It wasn't exactly a bumper crop of available UFA goalies that season (there's a reason Huet got as much money as he did from Chicago). Theodore was probably the best he was going to get in 2008. You also omit the addition of Vokoun in 2011-12, who (aside of Bruce insulting him by starting Neuvy in the opener) did really well for the Caps until he suffered a groin tear that forced them to give the reigns to Holtby. And the "rookie after rookie" in net group was actually quite good as well. Varlamov became a long-time NHL starter at a high level, and fetched the Capitals a 1st and 2nd via trade. Neuvirth was solid as a platoon-level goalie, and possibly could have been more if he could stay healthy. And Braden Holtby goes without saying. Going with their homegrown prospects in net isn't exactly a poor choice in the long run, considering the caliber of those prospects.
On defense, I think his addition of Tom Poti is still underrated. Poti's tenure was disrupted by a groin injury, but in the time he was on the ice he was a very effective veteran anchor for that defense. I still maintain that if he doesn't have the eye injury that removes him during game 6 and keeps him out of game 7 against Montreal in 2010, the Capitals probably win that series (he had been +9(!!) in that series so far, and was the mentor playing opposite Carlson - Carlson would end up giving up a goal against without Poti in both G6 and G7). Wideman was also a solid add. Hamrlik was a mixed bag (great his first season, awful his second). I agree he probably could have addressed the D a little more aggressively, but I also think McPhee was building a forward-looking D corps angled around mobility and puck control (the exact type of D group that would become all the rage in the NHL shortly after he left DC - including Pittsburgh winning B2B Cups with such a formula).
As for McPhee apparently never signing "quality forwards" - what? I'm going to interpret that as sign or trade, because otherwise you're not crediting GMBM with the Oshie acquisition. GMGM absolutely acquired plenty of quality forwards. Mike Knuble? Joel Ward? Jason Chimera? Viktor Kozlov? A pair of very effective 2Cs who priced themselves out of returns to DC in Mike Ribeiro and Mikhail Grabovski? The best years of Troy Brouwer's career (his boxcar stats were good enough that he could become the centerpiece of that Oshie trade)? And all this is setting aside the pre-Ovie years when (under instruction from Ted) he acquired Jaromir Jagr and then subsequently Robert Lang. I don't think getting forwards was ever GMGM's shortcoming. He got forwards by the drove.
As for Vegas - check out the reviews of the draft at the time. The threads on HFBoards were brutal to GMGM. And it wasn't just on these boards that folks were questioning his decisions to pass on Manson/Fowler and Dumba/Scandella, there were plenty of pundits who questioned if he got enough for those moves. As for whether he's done enough since year 1 in Vegas, a reminder that McPhee is no longer GM in Vegas. He's President, with Kelly McCrimmon handling GM duties since 2019. McPhee was only in charge of roster decisions for the first 2 seasons basically. All the stuff with the Lehner/MAF/Prior goalie drama, Eichel, Gusev, Dadonov, and salary cap hell have come under McCrimmon's watch.
- Aug 12, 2008
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Im not sure what goalies were or werent available back then now and you may be right but you knew you werent winning with theodore and the rookies. Rookies take time to develop unless your shesterkin or similar. Im confused by the bolded. My point was that GMBM acquired oshie who was immediately the best forward acquisition of the ovi era. Knuble did well and I forgot about him. The rest were mediocre which is exactly what GMGM always looked for. All were nhl players but none had the oshie potential and he jettisoned brouwer in the process. Ribeiro had star power. Grabo was meh. I was talking about the ovi era but fine, yea he got jagr. Imo there had to be more GmGm could have done to make the team better 07-10 when ovi was carrying them on his back. They lost every year because there was no secondary scoring of any kind, their defense was journeyman nhl players or cast-offs and the goalies were mediocre at best. Pittsburgh in that same time frame was always active at the deadline for the best players. Did they win? Once yea but at least they tried to win the rest of those years.
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McPhee did a lot of good things here. He also did some bad things. You give him credit for Ribs and Grabovski but he also famously said he didn’t need to sign a 2C because Brooks Laich was their Mike Richards. We don’t need to rehash the Forsberg trade and there are others not worth discussing but to his credit he was a master at not handing out bad contracts and he deserves credit for a lot. Hell, he might have a statue in DC if he didn’t cheap out on Chara in 2006. Once the AAV hit $6M/year he bowed out, pivoted to signing Pothier, and Chara went to the highest bidder which was Boston. Imagine if he didn’t cheap out and we paired prime Big Z with prime Mike Green to go along in a few years with a young John Carlson and Karl Alzner. They may have won a Cup (or a few) earlier than they did.
My issue with George was he always hoarded his nuts. He always overinflated the value of his guys. A lot of his acquisitions were good depth players or short term bandaids but he never really took a swing for the fences. Maybe that’s for the best because when he did, he was on the wrong side of one of the worst trades in NHL history.
- Aug 12, 2008
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you said it better then me. he never went for the impact players that would have helped ovi. he kept saving for the future. be neat to see one of those this draft pick became that draft pick or player trees to see how much he had to do with the cup win. think the erat trade was him being desperate.
McCrimmon doesn’t work in a vacuum. I’m sure McPhee is green lighting a lot of what he “proposes”.
As far as the rest? That’s a nice rosey view of GMGM’s time here. Meh.
I will just say this: there is a reason the name McClellan is on the Cup, and McPhee isn’t.
Hivemind
We're Touched
I looked up the 2008 UFA class as part of that post. It wasn't a good crop of goalies. Unless there was some name I didn't recognize when scanning the list, it was Theodore, Huet, and a bunch of guys who were functionally done in the NHL (Kolzig, Hasek, Thibault, Aebischer). The only goalies I recognize as being traded in the upcoming season were Pascal Leclaire and then Kolzig being salary dumped to Toronto. So not exactly a good trade group of goalies, either. I certainly didn't love Theodore, but he was the best solution available at the time.
Guys like Oshie don't fall off trees. There's a reason that even GMBM hasn't pulled off another Oshie trade (as much as some of us would have liked him to do something splashy in the past 2ish years to try and take another shot during the Ovie window). This was also an era in which they had internal forward options in Semin and Backstrom
By no means do I think GMGM was a perfect GM. I just don't get the vitriol towards him at all. He's a great GM for building an organization up, both in terms of the roster decisions as well as the greater organizational decisions. The biggest GMGM detractors give credit to Mahoney for the team's foundation, but it was GMGM who first brought Mahoney into the organization and convinced Ted to increase the amateur scouting budget. GMGMs relationship with Dave Prior built a pipeline of goalies in Washington, and was doing the same in Vegas until McCrimmon somehow burned the relationship with Prior and MAF. McPhee is the type of GM you want to built your organization, load your roster up, and get you into a favorable position. So far in his career, he hasn't been able to cross the summit, and I'm pleased the organization made the change in GM when they did. But they don't achieve their success without McPhee putting them in that good spot to begin with.
Do I think McPhee hoarded his nuts a bit too much for most of his tenure? Yes, I agree. And I also agree with the notion that the bookends of his tenure were likely influenced by upper management pressure on him (Ted was famously involved in the Jagr situation early on), and the Erat trade was likely a desperation trade as a result. It's also been pretty widely circulated that McPhee was overruled on at least one coaching decision (he wanted Jon Cooper, but either Leonsis or Patrick picked Adam Oates), and the subsequent dysfunction between Oates and McPhee led to the team's implosion (as outlined in Katie Carerra's last big article). Heck, even the Erat trade might not have been quite as bad as it was had Oates not tried to convert a 32 year old career winger into a 3rd line center (don't get me wrong, it would never have been a good trade, but it might not have been as disastrous without Oates doing Oates stuff).
I also think there's a certain time for different GM roster philosophies. As I mentioned, I'm pleased the organization made a change in philosophy when they did. But with a younger team and a larger window, that's the time for patience and trying to load up for multiple runs at the Cup. I don't think that's when you blow away all your assets too early. Having multiple seasons with ~20% odds is better than dumping everything into a single season or two in which you maybe improve your odds to ~25%. On the other end of the spectrum, when your team is getting older and your window is closing, that's when aggression makes sense. That's when you invest in ways to increase the odds of the few chances you have remaining, and find ways to extend the window.
Its pretty pathetic that the next highest total is 11. Not knocking on Johansson, he is having a good season for his standards but in the grand scheme of things I dont this is anything to be excited about. Regardless of the name, 11 goals 45 games into the season is a sign of trouble from secondary scoring.
Hivemind
We're Touched
For context, 11 goals is tied for 123rd in the NHL in goal scoring. If scorers were evenly distributed, an 11 goal scorer should be the 4th or 5th highest goal scorer on a team.
Granted, it only takes 2 more goals to get all the way up to a tie for 90th. And Conor Sheary also has 11 goals, with a bunch of others at 9 (Strome, Mantha, Oshie) or 10 (Dowd). Hopefully a continuously healthy Oshie (lol) or a now healthy Tom Wilson can become the team's de facto #2 finishing threat in the second half of the season.
John Price
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- Sep 19, 2008
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The Blaine Forsythe signed puck is up to $100 with four bids. Clearly none of those four people are posters here.
twabby
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- Mar 9, 2010
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895
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I mean, there's a lot of names on that Cup that are McPhee's draft picks and for that, he deserves some credit. He is what he is, a very good GM who never got over the hump. BMac didn't have to build anything from scratch, he inherited a well stocked team that just needed a few parts, and a good bit of luck too.
Some people are builders and like going from 0 to 1, others like taking something already built and making it better or their own. No different in sports management than it is in the real world.
Calicaps
NFA
The Caps let McPhee go and kept Mahoney. Just sayin'.
Hivemind
We're Touched
McPhee was the one who hired Mahoney, and then convinced Ted to increase the amateur scouting budget.
RedRocking
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Not sure how much Dowd’s injury has affected their calculus, but this should make a lot of people here happy:
Brian23
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- Dec 3, 2011
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All imma say is that defending Brouwer is some fighting words.
Man was the ultimate Passenger. Was right up there with Jeff Schultz as my most annoyed players in a Caps jersey.
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