Speculation: Caps Roster General Discussion (Coaching/FAs/Cap/Lines/etc) | 2024-25 Summer Edition

DWGie26

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Well it is one preseason game. But some guys have stood out which we needed. There are 7 forwards who played in game 1 that are also playing in Game 2. 6 players new to game 2 (and 6 out). Some tweeners like Miro and Cristal (and even Lappy) will have to prove they can play a string of games. Would be great to have a have man competiton on that third line.
 

Calicaps

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Well it is one preseason game. But some guys have stood out which we needed. There are 7 forwards who played in game 1 that are also playing in Game 2. 6 players new to game 2 (and 6 out). Some tweeners like Miro and Cristal (and even Lappy) will have to prove they can play a string of games. Would be great to have a have man competiton on that third line.
Sorry, where are you seeing the roster info?
 

Roshi

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After first looks I fully expect Vrana not to make it.

Only spot we have left is "rotation". He isnt currently outplaying Milano or Protas out of the everyday lineup. Cristall is forcing their hand to give him extended look with the 9 games. Miro is looking good and ready to play bunch of hockey up this year. And then there is Frank, Sgarbossa who have to pass waivers, and are at the end of their journey with the Caps if they dont make it up. These guys just deserve it more and Vrana would need to be at his '18 level to actually outplay someone out of their top9 spot.

They do have cap space to run with 14 forwards if they still like Vrana too, but does that make any sense. Nostalgy would have been fun obviously, but unless Vrana really forces his way in Ill rather give the spot to the Hershey/prospect core that is gelling in for tomorrows.

Shepard has lost his momentum. He needed to have a monster camp and look solid as rock from the get go. He didnt look sharp against Flyers and Stevenson was better in his half. Thats fine. Shepard has nothing to prove at AHL-level anymore and I hope he gets his chance somewhere, but I like our goalies too much to feel bad for Hunter.

Defence is set in stone.

Ovie-Dubois/Strome-Mangiapane
McMichael-Strome/Dubois-Wilson
Milano-Lapierre-Cristall/Miro
Duhaime-Dowd-Protas
Raddysh
+ Frank / Sgarbossa / Trineyev

Fehervary-Carlson
Chychrun-Roy
Sandin-TvR
Alexeeyev
+ Iorio, McIlrath, HHA

Lindgren/Thompson
+ Stevenson

Quite a different view if you look 2 years back. There was a lot of rumbling and still is, but hey, they actually did rebuild on the fly. Leonard, Parascak, Hutson, Protas younger, Mateiko, Muggli, Funk, Chesley etc etc. Our pipe doesnt look like a perennial rebuilder, but it looks as there is a lot of support coming up the next few years.

Really excited for the new season! Either we are making a solid run for the playoff-spot again, or at worst case scenario we atleast have a lot of interesting pieces to A) sell and B) develope. Add in Ovechkin's record hunt. Getting the popcorns out.

Id love to see Oshie returning for playoffs.
 

MW6

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After first looks I fully expect Vrana not to make it.

Only spot we have left is "rotation". He isnt currently outplaying Milano or Protas out of the everyday lineup. Cristall is forcing their hand to give him extended look with the 9 games. Miro is looking good and ready to play bunch of hockey up this year. And then there is Frank, Sgarbossa who have to pass waivers, and are at the end of their journey with the Caps if they dont make it up. These guys just deserve it more and Vrana would need to be at his '18 level to actually outplay someone out of their top9 spot.

They do have cap space to run with 14 forwards if they still like Vrana too, but does that make any sense. Nostalgy would have been fun obviously, but unless Vrana really forces his way in Ill rather give the spot to the Hershey/prospect core that is gelling in for tomorrows.

Shepard has lost his momentum. He needed to have a monster camp and look solid as rock from the get go. He didnt look sharp against Flyers and Stevenson was better in his half. Thats fine. Shepard has nothing to prove at AHL-level anymore and I hope he gets his chance somewhere, but I like our goalies too much to feel bad for Hunter.

Defence is set in stone.

Ovie-Dubois/Strome-Mangiapane
McMichael-Strome/Dubois-Wilson
Milano-Lapierre-Cristall/Miro
Duhaime-Dowd-Protas
Raddysh
+ Frank / Sgarbossa / Trineyev

Fehervary-Carlson
Chychrun-Roy
Sandin-TvR
Alexeeyev
+ Iorio, McIlrath, HHA

Lindgren/Thompson
+ Stevenson

Quite a different view if you look 2 years back. There was a lot of rumbling and still is, but hey, they actually did rebuild on the fly. Leonard, Parascak, Hutson, Protas younger, Mateiko, Muggli, Funk, Chesley etc etc. Our pipe doesnt look like a perennial rebuilder, but it looks as there is a lot of support coming up the next few years.

Really excited for the new season! Either we are making a solid run for the playoff-spot again, or at worst case scenario we atleast have a lot of interesting pieces to A) sell and B) develope. Add in Ovechkin's record hunt. Getting the popcorns out.

Id love to see Oshie returning for playoffs.
I think you’re right on the 7 d-men but I think the pairs are going to be:

Chychrun-Carlson
Sandin-Roy
Fehervary-TVR
Alexeyev

And I think Protas is going to be a lock on the 3rd line with Lapierre and Milano/Miro are going to rotate on the other wing.

Duhaime-Dowd-Raddysh should be the 4th line
 

zappa4ever

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Any chance cristall makes the team? Or even gets 8 games?
doubtful, but there is a chance since WSH needs goals and offense

basically, he has to force his way on the team by looking awesome tonight in 2nd preseason gm and continuing the awesomeness to jump over Miroshnichenko and Milano or enough to be 13th fwd; he did look good in gm 1

Assuming he'll be back in Kelowna next week after he gets some reps in preseason
 

MW6

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that is an awful way to write players names. Only CMM and PLD make sense here.
Sorry, I was to lazy to write them out in full and didn’t know their numbers.

The advertised lines are

McMichael-Dubois-Wilson
A.Protas-Lapierre-Mirosnichenko
Cristall-Sgarbossa-Frank
I.Protas-Rybinski-Dube
Paracek
 
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DWGie26

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I’m excited about all of these lines for tonight.

* CCM/PLD/Wilson should be our second line this year - so lets see how it is game 1
* Protas/Lappy/Miro could be a line next year. So that gives us another chance to look at a line and not just individual players
* Cristal has less NHL power on his line so it will be interesting to see what he is able to do there
* 4th line is fun with Lil pro and a couple of guys who could be NHLers in a couple of years

The lines being rostered now is getting real!
 
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CapitalsCupReality

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I’m excited about all of these lines for tonight.

* CCM/PLD/Wilson should be our second line this year - so lets see how it is game 1
* Protas/Lappy/Miro could be a line next year. So that gives us another chance to look at a line and not just individual players
* Cristal has less NHL power on his line so it will be interesting to see what he is able to do there
* 4th line is fun with Lil pro and a couple of guys who could be NHLers in a couple of years

The lines being rostered now is getting real!

Yeah Cristall on lines 1 or 2 and I feel better about him getting an NHL taste this year…I guess let’s see if he can make some noise…
 
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DWGie26

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I think you’re right on the 7 d-men but I think the pairs are going to be:

Chychrun-Carlson
Sandin-Roy
Fehervary-TVR
Alexeyev

And I think Protas is going to be a lock on the 3rd line with Lapierre and Milano/Miro are going to rotate on the other wing.

Duhaime-Dowd-Raddysh should be the 4th line
A couple of good breakdowns on F and D. We have cap space so it will definitely be 23 players. It will be either:

* 13F and 8D
* 14F and 7D

If Miro or Cristal makes the roster we will keep 14F. I don’t think Caps are worried about losing Ethan Bear on waivers but Dee depth is good as we have seen. So it’s 8D until a F makes it so you can’t say no. Yes isn’t good enough.
 
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qc14

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A couple of good breakdowns on F and D. We have cap space so it will definitely be 23 players. It will be either:

* 13F and 8D
* 14F and 7D

If Miro or Cristal makes the roster we will keep 14F. I don’t think Caps are worried about losing Ethan Bear on waivers but Dee depth is good as we have seen. So it’s 8D until a F makes it so you can’t say no. Yes isn’t good enough.
I think you're looking at 12F and 7D on the first day of the season with Bear sent to Hershey and AA staying up. That way you can put Backstrom on LTIR and keep Oshie on IR, only "wasting" ~$80k of space. If Bear gets claimed, you call up Miro to start with as he makes the most money out of everyone and once again you only lose out on ~$180k of LTIR space. Then I think they probably keep Miro and another forward, as I don't think any of the other D have played well enough to deserve a spot. If Bear clears though, I imagine they immediately put Oshie on LTIR and then recall him along with a forward and go 13/8.

In many ways the Kuzy contract termination has actually screwed them a bit -- they had everything set up perfectly to put Backstrom and Oshie on offseason LTIR and not waste any space, now they're going to have to do quite a few gymnastics (or potentially make a big add ...) to make sure they're not burning money
 

DWGie26

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I think you're looking at 12F and 7D on the first day of the season with Bear sent to Hershey and AA staying up. That way you can put Backstrom on LTIR and keep Oshie on IR, only "wasting" ~$80k of space. If Bear gets claimed, you call up Miro to start with as he makes the most money out of everyone and once again you only lose out on ~$180k of LTIR space. Then I think they probably keep Miro and another forward, as I don't think any of the other D have played well enough to deserve a spot. If Bear clears though, I imagine they immediately put Oshie on LTIR and then recall him along with a forward and go 13/8.

In many ways the Kuzy contract termination has actually screwed them a bit -- they had everything set up perfectly to put Backstrom and Oshie on offseason LTIR and not waste any space, now they're going to have to do quite a few gymnastics (or potentially make a big add ...) to make sure they're not burning money
I was more referring to opening night roster.

But fair points on the LTIP Optimization Cap. There are only two ways to get there:

1. Oshie on IR with his cap hit on the books. Then you send down anyone waivers exempt and go from there.
2. Pre opening roster trade which brings in salary. Certainly less likely but if they bring in someone $5M net that would allow 23 roster and hold someone like Frank who needs to go through waivers.
 

895

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Our first round picks from the GMBM era really have been trash.

People keep saying it's Ross Mahoney making the call and if that's true he's completely lost his touch. Just compare the GMGM era first rounders to the 2014-2020 ones.
 

AlexModvechkin8

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Our first round picks from the GMBM era really have been trash.

People keep saying it's Ross Mahoney making the call and if that's true he's completely lost his touch. Just compare the GMGM era first rounders to the 2014-2020 ones.
Said this before but I think they made a decision to fundamentally shift what they were looking for during those years. They had loads of top end talent with the big club and took guys that seemingly had lower ceilings but could provide solid organizational depth on cheap ELCs.

As for your time frame, Vrana could have been a home run pick in 2014 and looked like it if not for personal issues. Samsonov was widely considered one of the top prospects in the world at his position for years both leading up to and after his draft position so I don’t fault them there - teams are still betting on his talent level 10 years after he was drafted. Johansen and Alexeyev fit the bill of mobile puck moving defensemen who fit the way they like to play but have been underwhelming.

Starting in 2019 with CMM, seems like they went back to their old method of finding guys they think were undervalued with higher upside that maybe scared a few teams off. Also, go back and look at the 2019 draft class and tell me if there are any players better than him at all in the entire draft selected after 25. Bobby Brink, maybe? Shane Pinto, maybe? Maybe I’m missing someone but it looks like a brutal draft class as a whole. Lapierre seems like a great pick. They also got Fever and Pro in those drafts. 2021 seems meh but the last three classes are exciting.

I think the long stretch of getting guys like Green, Semin, Carlson, and Kuznetsov warped people into thinking that finding stars later in the draft was relatively straight forward and that finding guys like that was the norm and not the exception.
 

Kazer

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Said this before but I think they made a decision to fundamentally shift what they were looking for during those years. They had loads of top end talent with the big club and took guys that seemingly had lower ceilings but could provide solid organizational depth on cheap ELCs.

As for your time frame, Vrana could have been a home run pick in 2014 and looked like it if not for personal issues. Samsonov was widely considered one of the top prospects in the world at his position for years both leading up to and after his draft position so I don’t fault them there - teams are still betting on his talent level 10 years after he was drafted. Johansen and Alexeyev fit the bill of mobile puck moving defensemen who fit the way they like to play but have been underwhelming.

Starting in 2019 with CMM, seems like they went back to their old method of finding guys they think were undervalued with higher upside that maybe scared a few teams off. Also, go back and look at the 2019 draft class and tell me if there are any players better than him at all in the entire draft selected after 25. Bobby Brink, maybe? Shane Pinto, maybe? Maybe I’m missing someone but it looks like a brutal draft class as a whole. Lapierre seems like a great pick. They also got Fever and Pro in those drafts. 2021 seems meh but the last three classes are exciting.

I think the long stretch of getting guys like Green, Semin, Carlson, and Kuznetsov warped people into thinking that finding stars later in the draft was relatively straight forward and that finding guys like that was the norm and not the exception.
Caps had a bunch of busts in the GMGM era too. It's just easy to forget about them because of the success stories. Pokulok, Finley, and Gustafsson as outright busts (1st round picks only), and I'd argue Alzner was a bust relative to where he was taken (you should get more than a 3-4 defensive D out of the 5th overall pick).

Our pre-2004 drafting (under GMGM/Mahoney) was crap too. Fehr over a ton of options. Eminger over Semin in 2002 and then Gordon too. Sutherby in 2000. Beech in 1999.

The Caps had a hot streak from 2004 - 2014 (minus 2005 & 2011) in terms of first round picks and a cold streak from 2015-18. As you said, they seem to have regained their momentum from 2019 forward (and Alexeyev could carve out a decent career as a 6-7 D).
 
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