The Capitals have signed Wojtek Wolski to a 1 year, $600,000 deal, because apparently GMGM has started listening to me and is signing players based on how fun it will be to hear Locker try to say their name. Wolski is Polish (though he grew up in Toronto and in fact played against one of Bob McKenzie’s sons), and his name is pronounced “VOI-tek VOL-ski.” In the words of The Jam, that’s entertainment.

His career stats are 95-163-258 in 424 games, for a .608 PPG, though last year he went 4-8-12 in 31 while spending 6 games in the AHL. He scored the majority of his points in his 5 years with Colorado, before having 2 lackluster seasons where he bounced from Phoenix to the Rangers to Florida. His season highs are his first full season with the Avs (50) and his season split between the Avs and Coyotes (65). He went on to score 35 points… then 12.

That brings him to us. We got him heavily discounted (his last contract was 2 yr/$7.6 mil) and with low expectations. It looks like he’s had a monkey on his back for the last two years — resulting in his being scratched and therefore looking worse and worse. What could be the source of this scoring drought? Could he be, dare I say, enigmatic?

Wolski has been thrown around as a sort of replacement for Semin. Superficially it seems he’s not — for one thing, Semin has 408 points in a comparable number of games, as well as a $6 mil price tag — but at his very best, he could be compared with an average Sasha year (like the last two seasons). I don’t know what he needs to be great: his time with the Avalanche didn’t overlap with their awful dark years, but I’m not sure they had any spectacular talent, either.

The other best description of Wolski is as a gamble, but this isn’t perfect either. If he’s a gamble, he’s an extremely safe one. His upside is 65 points and his downside is 12, but at $600,000 if he doesn’t perform, we haven’t lost very much, and we can stash him in Hershey if things get too awful. Or maybe he’ll go absolutely bizonkers with Mojo and vindicate McPhee’s signing. According to Neil Greenberg:

For ‪#Caps‬ to get fair value for Wolski’s contract, he needs to put up 4G/5A/minus-2 in 36GP.

Which isn’t asking a whole lot. We play the Blue Jackets and the Oilers, right?

Wolski seems like he wants to turn over a new leaf, and the Caps are a pretty good team to do it with. For once he’s joined his new team at the beginning of a season, with a new coach, hoping to install a new style. He’ll be playing (or at least practicing) with an extremely high-caliber and, perhaps more importantly, offensively-oriented talent. Maybe that will be enough to kickstart his scoring touch.

(As always, numbers from CapGeek, NHL.com, or Hockey-Reference.)

There are two ways a general manager can approach Free Agent Frenzy:

1. They can sign marginal players for outrageous amounts and lengths in a desperate attempt to fix a problem that they know exists but can’t quite pin down (or as a bull-headed adherence to the particular ethos they have arbitrarily chosen to build the team around)

or

2. They can do nothing, which allows them to avoid making insane impulse buys just to prove that they’re doing something (as in option 1) but which will cause the fanbase to moan that they aren’t doing enough to improve the franchise (though that same fanbase will be moaning six months later when the reality of option 1 is apparent).

So what has GMGM done?
» Continue reading “Capitals Behave Cautiously During Free Agency”

Adieu, Dennis Wideman. We barely knew you, and yet we knew you as much as we’d like.

Faithful readers will know that there is no love lost between myself and Wideman. I coined the term “Widemanesque” after game 5 of the WSH-NYR series, meaning “awful” or “disappointing” or “the worst ever.” I nicknamed him Dennis “NHL All-Star?” Wideman and Dennis “Useless Paperweight” Wideman. I was not convinced that he was an All-Star and totally let down by him during the playoffs.

And yet he was. Dennis Wideman was the only Capital to make it to the All-Star Game. He was 4th on the team in scoring (11-35-46). He led the team in ice time, averaging 23:54 in the regular season. On paper, he was perfectly satisfactory.

I think it’s most accurate to see him as disappointing. We paid him $4 million and expected him to take some of the pressure off Mike Green (as a dynamic defenseman capable of scoring) and be the final piece of a Stanley Cup-caliber team. He failed to do this, and worse, he didn’t seem to be disciplined for his mistakes.

Maybe it’s shallow to assume it was merely some form of hockey nepotism — Dennis Wideman and John Carlson (21:51) had the most and second most TOI/G on the team. They finished -8 and -15. Mike Green and Karl Alzner both had less ice time and a +/- of +5 and +12, respectively. But when Alex Ovechkin’s dwindling ice time is held up as an indication of the hardline stance Hunter was taking, it seems suspicious that two underperformers are not penalized… and are both former London Knights.

Because he was supposed to be better than this, it was all the worse when he was out of position, or made sloppy turnovers, or indirectly caused a goal against. I could’ve handled that sort of behavior from Jeff Schultz (not been pleased about it, mind you, but my expectations for Jeff Schultz are relatively low). I expected competent defense with a soupcon of scoring — the above-average scoring did not excuse the sometimes trainwreck defense. He was pretty good when he was good. He was a genuine liability when he wasn’t.

By trading Wideman rather than letting him walk as a UFA, we received a 5th-round pick in the 2013 draft and defenseman Jordan Henry from the Flames. They promptly signed him to a 5-year, $26.25 million deal with a full no movement clause. The best word I have to describe that deal? Widemanesque.

General Manager George McPhee, commonly known around these parts as GMGM, has confirmed that Mike Knuble will NOT be back as a member of our Washington Capitals.

It’s well known around these parts that I’m a fan of Mike Knuble. Perhaps the entry on the night of his 1000th game will jog your memory if you did not recall that fact. Mike Knuble is OUTLANDISHLY important to my life.

There is one friend with whom it is inviolate tradition to begin every evening of joyous celebration with a toast “To Mike Knuble!” and may the gods strike us if we forget.

Another friend who knows nothing of hockey whatsoever, but has committed to memory that, as I once said to her, “I cannot be friends with anyone who does not know who Mike Knuble is,” and henceforth has made mention to me, “Annie? Uh, Mike Knuble? I remember that, but why?”

And a third, who, when I said “MIKE KNUBLE GONE WHY” replied “OH GOD NO” despite having no interest in hockey herself.

To those reactions, let me add:

» Continue reading “The Departure of Knuble”

After a few days off, I’ve recovered sufficiently to say something about the Capitals. (Literally recovered. I have scabs on my knee from my nails cutting where I was clutching it during Game 7.) Unfortunately what I have to say is “what a shame.” These Caps really had the look of a team that could go all the way. Or perhaps what I mean is that we could have looked that way, but factors against us combined to make it not so… And thus took us, I think a few years further away from a Cup.

First, we will bid adieu to Tomas Vokoun, who signed an astoundingly cheap contract knowing full well he would only be here a year. He has in fact complained before at how homesick he was. There’s nothing wrong with missing your family, but perhaps he could’ve considered the before he chose the career of “professional athlete in a country that is not your homeland.” Personally, I don’t have a lot of sympathy for him. Maybe I would have more if he had ended up being that Cup-contending goalie he was meant to be, instead of putting up average to good reg season numbers then getting injured immediately before the postseason began.

Secondly, we will almost definitely bid adieu to Sasha Semin, who, while never the lynchpin of anything, was always a welcome addition to our offense. To me, his gorgeous sniper-like wrist shots made up for the lazy offensive zone stick penalties. Even when they made the coach do this. I understand why he would want out, but I’m going to miss him.

Also on the list of players I would miss: Mike Knuble. He’s 40 and coming off an unimpressive season thanks to Dale Hunter Hockey (TM), but I think we can squeeze a couple mil under the cap to retain his services, eh GMGM? He says he both feels fine and wants to keep playing, and even if he didn’t get the 20 goals he wanted, he still has grit and adds the presence of a grizzled veteran. And may I remind of you of when he outraced a man half his age to wash out an icing in the Rangers series? The man still has the internal fire.
» Continue reading “A Look At Capitals Free Agents, Part 1″

Per ESPN, Alexander Semin will not pursue a contract extension with the Caps, and instead will test the waters of free agency.

According to his agent Mark Gandler:

I think the issue is with the organization, not necessarily with the coach. They told us Alex is not going to play short-handed, he’s not going to play in the last minute. He’s going to get the same icetime as everybody else … Alex is not ready to be a role player. He wants to be a full-time player. It’s important to him.

Semin has always been one of the players most heavily tarred with the xenophobic “enigmatic Russian” brush. He has been variously accused of being lazy, of not trying, of not caring, and of not being a team player. And yet he is one of the most purely talented hockey players in the entire NHL. He has an absolutely killer wrist shot and he goes through periods of offensive dominance mingled with periods where he lies fallow.

I really like Gandler’s description of him as a “role player,” because it fits so perfectly and yet doesn’t really make sense. A role player is usually a face-off specialist, or a third-liner who lodges mega-PK minutes. But Semin really is a role player: it just so happens his role is gorgeous shots of first line quality. He isn’t a practical role player, because it’s not something he can just do the way one can take a face-off or block shots, but it’s the only area in which he is truly reliable (that and offensive zone stick penalties).

He’d be a great addition to a team that wants devastating secondary scoring, but devastating in morale rather than quantity. A perfect Semin shot is devastating to a goalie because there’s nothing you can do about it: it’s simply beautiful. He can also be devastating to his own team, in the offensive-murdering penalties (that make coaches make this face) and the frustrating times when he can’t seem to score.

That said, I look forward to the Blue Jackets picking him up in desperation!

Edit: Upon landing in Stockholm, Semin said, through translator Pavel Lysenkov (of Sovetski Sport), “There was no talk at all that I am not going to sign with the Capitals for sure. I have not talked to them [the Capitals] about leaving.”

Dammit, Semin. I’ve got too many emotions as it is already.

It’s curtains for the Caps as they are swept out of the playoffs by the Tampa Bay Lightning. I’m not particularly interested in breaking down this game. What I am interested in is the injury reports that will trickle in (Nick Backstrom better have a pretty damn good excuse) and of course, we all wait with bated breath to see if Bruce Boudreau still has a job.

Later this week I’ll make some picks for the NHL awards (June 22) and maybe talk a little draft (June 24-25). Some IIHF updates, if I can’t find the correct repository for them.

I generally look forward to July 1st, aka Free Agent Frenzy, both because I am an immense nerd and because it provides a break from the miserable hockey drought known as summer. But this year I have a something to combat both reasons. The latter: in Germany it’s summer semester rather than spring, so I have classes to take my mind off things. The former: much as I regret it, my heart rules my head, and it seems unlikely that Varlamov does NOT leave us. And July 1st I will put on my Varlamov jersey, drink a bottle of wine, and cry.

Brooks Laich is also an Unrestricted Free Agent, and I look forward to seeing Brian Burke welcome him (and Brad Richards) put on their new jerseys in a press conference where Burkie’s tie is scrutinized for any hint of their fortune in the upcoming season.

All right, that was facetious, but a couple players I reckon won’t be coming back: Marco Sturm (sob), Matt Bradley (Hendricks does his job better), and Jason Arnott certainly thinks he won’t. Via @SWhyno:

Arnott: “Hopefully they take the experience away and look at it that way and have a horrible summer and come back hungrier next year.”

Who is “they,” Arny? I refer to the Caps as we more often than you do (Mr. 2-goals-since-March). At least Backstrom seemed contrite, saying his play was “so f**king frustrating.” (Thanks @SkyKerstein.)

Joe Beninati apparently said “Sean Bergenheim. I’d like to strangle him.” during the broadcast. I was watching the Lightning feed, which was really just another nail in my heart. I could’ve used the comfort of two people I like more than most individuals whom I’ve actually met. (He immediately apologized, by the way.) But can you think of a statement you agree with more?

Here’s a Puck Daddy article on the loss and we can expect a eulogy in the coming days. Last year it was by the PensBlog (who are very funny though I’d never admit it) and rather than mocking and roasting us, it was actually a pretty fair assessment of our failings a team. For us, the hyperbole is true.

Enjoy the rest of the postseason. I certainly won’t.