The Washington Capitals look like Tier I Stanley Cup contenders right now, not with the way they have been playing (especially in their last four games), but because they’ve strung together 13 wins in a row. If the Caps were in the playoffs right now and hypothetically played three teams in three series, they’d figure to be be in Game 2 of the Stanley Cup Finals in relatively short order. They are the class of the East.
Thursday night, however, the New Jersey Devils had something to say about that. General Manager Lou Lamoriello acquired the 26-year-old, unrestricted free agent-to-be Ilya Kovalchuk from Altanta, for the most sensible and most valuable package any team seemingly could have offered. The talents the Devils sacrificed for this deal to go through were not part of their contending core, but still valuable pieces that can help a struggling franchise like Atlanta.
Ilya Kovalchuk in a game against his new team, the New Jersey Devils
Niklas Bergfors is a 22-year old rookie who has developed slowly, but could one day be a second-line right wing, or if things stay the same in Atlanta, a first liner with the likes of Brian Little and Todd White. Johnny Oduya is a top four defenseman and a guy who is supposed to have some offensive upside, but with a big new contract (at $3.5 million) he became an expendable commodity doe DevilLou. Atlanta gets a good deal here because Oduya is under contract until 2012 and Bergfors is a restricted free agent until he is 27. The entry draft pick is going to be a low one, a late first rounder. According to Pierre LeBrun, Rick Dudley has got a thing for the suspended junior player Patrice Cormier, who is the final asset in this deal.
Forget Pittsburgh for now. In an earlier post-game notes file here, I wrote that the only teams to beat the Caps this season more than once were the Toronto Maple Leafs and the good ol’ Devs. Okay, forget Toronto too. The Devils are a fantastic team and one of the best-run organizations who have proved over the past two years (or 15) that they can still compete in the regular season without their top stars (or a 50-goal scorer). When Martin Brodeur went down to injury in 2009, Scott Clemmensen tore it up for them, and they won the Atlantic Division by nine points. This year Paul Martin, one of their top pair blueliners, broke his arm in October and is still out. That is why losing Oduya is not that terrible a move by Lamoriello. Martin will likely come back some time after the Olympic break and is also an unrestricted free agent. Even more cap space for signing the Russian sniper will then be available.
Martin Brodeur is the best goalie in the world, even at 37 years old. While he may not be showing his top form since the calendar turned to 2010, he still remains the hardest netminder to beat in the league. Brodeur is a Cup winner, a Vezina winner, an Olympic gold medalist, and he’s staked a compelling claim to the designation of the best goalie ever. In my honest opinion, the better playoff team on paper is the New Jersey Devils. Or put another way, all other things being relatively equal, the team with the best netminder in a seven-game series has a really good chance of prevailing. Yesterday, the Devils staked a great case to evening things up with the Caps in terms of scoring punch. I still believe that the Caps possess greater overall scoring depth, however.
Adding Kovalchuk to a team that can actually support his top line talents is a huge bonus for the player. Playing with Todd White and Brian Little in Atlanta only made them better. Zach Parise, Travis Zajac, Patrick Elias are about to unleash another Russian Machine on the league. Those guys are elite skaters. Match them up with the Caps’ elite skaters (Ovechkin, Green, Backstrom, Semin) and I say Washington’s still got a one-up, plus a better supporting cast. But there’s no jam in my doughnut today because the New Jersey Devils have an elite goaltender, while the Washington Capitals only have a future elite goaltender and a former elite goaltender. And when the playoffs come around, a game like Thursday night against a mediocre team like the New York Rangers is going to be decided by goalies, not goal-scorers.
Martin Brodeur arrives at the end of his contract in 2012 and will likely retire then. Lamoriello knows the odds of replacing Brodeur with another 75-game goalie of his talent are near impossible. Breaking with his conservative regime, the 2009 Hockey Hall of Fame builder inductee may appear as if he is going for broke this season while his 1990 first round draft pick (20th overall) is still in the rarefied atmosphere of NHL goaltending. But, even if Kovalchuk bails on July 1st, I’m willing to bet the Devils are an even better team next year. They’ll certainly have cap space to play with if he does.
Capitals’ fans ought to view Thursday’s blockbuster deal as a tip of the hat by one of the NHL’s savviest managers to the stunning success the Caps are enjoying this season. There’s no mistaking that the Devils’ pursuit of Ilya Kovalchuk was a clear-cut case of trying to power up to keep up with the Caps. The postseason in the East just got a whole lot more interesting.
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