I don’t have many more bits. It’s hard to come up with other scenarios to improve the team when the obvious one is just sitting there and no one is having it.
Toronto is going out and adding Ryan Reaves tomorrow. They’re looking like they might add Connor Brown. I highly suspect that they would not only straight up trade William Nylander for Tom Wilson, but that they would add a non-negligible asset to the trade as well. They’re clearly looking for toughness and grit. Negotiations with Nylander aren’t going great, and Treliving already has bad memories of Gaudreau leaving for nothing and Tkachuk leaving as well. There’s motivation from Toronto to make a deal.
Is this a trade you’d turn down? We’re not going to reach common ground if you’re turning down that trade. It works money-wise: Nylander only makes $1.8 million more than Wilson this year, Mantha is off the books next year which gives them room to extend Nylander. It works production-wise: Nylander has outscored Wilson every year of their careers. It works advanced-stat wise: Nylander is vastly more impactful than Wilson at driving goal differential. It works asset-wise: Washington would give up nothing in terms of futures. It works younger/faster-wise: Nylander is younger and faster. It works fit-wise: Nylander is an outstanding transition forward with the puck on his stick, a key weakness of the Capitals forward corps.
I’m not really interested in hearing that Capitals fans would be ok with moving Wilson on the right deal and then turning down that deal. It doesn’t square.
If you want another idea I guess trade Fehervary before the league finds out he’s not very good. Maybe they can eke value out there. But then again he’s only 23 and 7 years away from his prime so I guess you can’t trade him, especially after the stellar season he had this year.
I guess you could trade the 2024 first round pick and hope it’s enough for DeBrincat or someone of his ilk. I don’t know how the money works in that case unless you ship yet another asset out to move Mantha, for instance. I don’t particularly like the DeBrincat fit either, despite his skill level.
But it begins and ends with Wilson. Moving on from him now is strategically the best and most impactful move they can make. If you’re bored with me saying that, I guess be bored. You only have a few more days until he signs for like 8 x $7.5 million, so please bear with me until then.
