On Frozen Blog

Normally, we need until the actual arrival of July 1 to see frenzied, post-draft player movement, but early Tuesday evening the sweater-changing ticker at TSN was in overdrive. Bouwmeester inked to a five-year deal by the Flames; Vancouver GM Mike Gillis jet-setted halfway around the world to meet personally with his Sedin twins, and to make a final pitch to them to return, with an agreement perhaps achieved; the Sens and Oil were on the precipice of a deal that would see the Oil send Andrew Cogliano, Dustin Penner, and Vlad Smid to Ottawa for Dany Heatley; and the doozy of the day — Bob Gainey attempting to start a second riot on St. Catherine’s Street by sending great young Habs talent to Madison Square Garden in exchange for the underperforming, bloated contract of Scott Gomez.

Conspicuously quiet in all this frenzy, a quiet dating back to last Friday night, were/are the Caps. They need a second-line center, a first-line right wing, and at least one ornery big body on the blueline. That’s just to keep pace with the elite in the East next season (Philly’s already upped the ante), not necessarily to pass the likes of the Pens. I’m of the opinion that the loss of Sergei Fedorov will hurt more than merely in the faceoff circle.

Here’s a July 1 Christmas wish-list from OFB: Erik Cole and Mike Komisarek. The Raleigh News and Observer reported Tuesday that Cole wasn’t re-upping with the ‘Canes without testing free agency. Komisarek, too, will take a look around. As wonderful as both would be in D.C., we’re at least an overpaid, perpetually scratched Swede away from even thinking about making a move on those or any other impact free agents. A blogger recently bloodied by the Pens again can dream, though, can’t he?

The Caps are confronting two basic problems. The first is that last Friday the league and the NHL Players Association agreed on a salary cap increase of just $100,000 for next season, to $56.8 million. Absent the KHL swooping in to save us from two more seasons of engagement with our out-of-system-and-synch Swede, the Caps, who were rather close to last season’s cap, figure to be near it again. In fact, according to NHLnumbers.com, the Caps presently have 14 players under contract for the swollen sum of $45 million. That’s not a lot of room left to sign upwards of a dozen bodies for next season.

While the Caps have sheared off some $7.5 million in salary this offseason by bidding adieu to Fedorov, Viktor Kozlov, and Donald Brashear, it’s becoming abundantly clear that they needed to.

Michael Nylander counts for $5.5 million of cap space for next season. Alexander Semin’s now a $5 million man. It’s distinctly possible that the Caps won’t be able to afford Shaone Morrisonn next season, who made $2 million in 2008-09 and figures to get at least a modest raise for 2009-10. Believe it or not, Ben Clymer’s still on the Caps’ books for next season, according to NHLnumbers, to the tune of $367,000.  

But perhaps the overriding reason George McPhee almost certainly won’t be an active shopper beginning today is what confronts him next offseason: new deals for Semin and Backstrom. And what if Tomas Fleischmann pots 20 goals in 2009-10? He, too, is due a new deal next summer. It’s now more important than ever for the Caps to hold on to almost the entire lot of Bears and CHLers and recently inked collegians they have under contract this summer — they’re the comparatively cheap components that necessarily must surround a contending team’s stars, and they must perform at or above their contract value for a team to play deep into spring.

That’s what Rob Scuderi, Kris Letang, Alex Goligoski, Maxime Talbot, and Tyler Kennedy did for the Pens this past season.  

It’s awfully difficult to imagine the Caps competing for Glory in 2009-10 with Michael Nylander assigned second-line center duty all season long. **Paging Gazprom.** Still, it’s easier to imagine Simeon Varlamov outperforming Jose Theodore in training camp, and Theodore, with just one year left on his deal, being dealt near the end of camp for some cap relief, rather than envisioning even Bob Gainey pursuing Michael Nylander. 

But it’s perhaps worth noting that as unappealing as Michael Nylander’s contract is now, come the February trade deadline, should he miraculously recover some semblance of his old form, his salary for 2010-11 drops by $2.5 million, down to $3 million in the final year of his deal. A veteran contending team who’s lost a skilled center to injury could potentially be enticed to taking him off our hands then. Given the new money needed next summer for the Caps’ star core, one of those young, recently drafted Swedish centers may be slotted in as Nylander’s replacement.