“I think we’re still looking to do more both in the free agency and the trade market,” MacLellan said Thursday. “Looking into a couple areas, and hopefully, we’re going to be aggressive here and improve our roster.”
Just a few hours after MacLellan made that statement, he traded a 2025 second-round pick to the Calgary Flames for winger Andrew Mangiapane. Mangiapane, 28, scored 14 goals and recorded 26 assists for 40 points in 75 games for the Flames this season. His best season was 2021-22, when he scored 35 goals, but the 5-foot-10, 184-pound forward is a consistent 40-50-point player and will add depth to the Capitals’ scoring.
Acquiring Dubois improved Washington’s center depth and helped the Capitals get younger up the middle; Nic Dowd, 34, is the oldest center on the roster and is headed into the final year of his contract. With Dubois, 26, joining Dylan Strome, 27, Hendrix Lapierre, 22, and Connor McMichael, 23, one of MacLellan’s goals is coming to fruition. McMichael is a pending restricted free agent; MacLellan said negotiations are in progress with both McMichael and Beck Malenstyn, also a pending RFA.
And while MacLellan said the Capitals are still looking to make adjustments up front, the next area of focus as MacLellan works to improve the roster appears to be the back end.
“Looking at our defensive mix,” MacLellan said, “wouldn’t mind changing that up a little bit.”
What Washington probably won’t do, even amid its stated plan to be aggressive, is move its first-round pick in this year’s draft. The Capitals hold the No. 17 pick, and MacLellan said that he expects them to make that selection Friday night.
Washington drafted Ryan Leonard with the No. 8 overall pick last year. The last two times the Capitals were picking in the middle of the first round, they took swings on players with high upside but risk associated with their health histories.
Both Ivan Miroshnichenko, selected 20th in 2022, and Lapierre, selected 22nd in 2020, have begun their professional careers looking like bets that will pay off for Washington. The duo helped the Hershey Bears win a second consecutive Calder Cup this week, and Lapierre was named the MVP of the AHL playoffs.
There aren’t any players that quite match Miroshnichenko’s or Lapierre’s risk profiles in this year’s class, but it’s an unusual draft in that there’s little consensus beyond the top five or six players. That means the Capitals could have a wide range of players available to them at 17th overall.
“I think we’re going to have a good player available to us at 17,” assistant general manager Ross Mahoney, who runs Washington’s amateur scouting, said Monday. “We’ll see how it goes as far as who the other teams are picking in front of us, but we feel confident that we’re going to get a good prospect at that pick.”
Added MacLellan on Thursday: “There’s a section of players at the top that are really good, and then I think it’s going to be a little gray as you get closer to us. Teams will have guys they like better than other guys, so it might get mixed up a little bit as it approaches our pick. We’re excited. I think Ross has a few guys that he really has interest in.”
Every team says it is approaching the draft intending to pick the best player available, and that’s particularly true in hockey, in which players often don’t reach the NHL for several years after they are drafted. A team’s needs in 2024 could be very different by the time the player in question joins it, so drafting for positional need is typically anathema in the NHL.
But as the Capitals project out their roster for the coming years, it’s becoming apparent that the largest gaps are on defense. The centers appear to be set for the foreseeable future, and prospects such as Miroshnichenko and Leonard give Washington a strong crop on the wing. The pool is lighter on defense, and Washington hasn’t drafted a defenseman in the first round since Alex Alexeyev in 2018.
Mahoney’s perspective on the draft class suggests the Capitals might lean toward a forward at No. 17, but with the potential for disparate opinions around the league, a defenseman Washington is high on could slip further down and be available.
“I think it’s a very good first round,” Mahoney said. “I think probably early in the first round, there’s some pretty quality defensemen, both right- and left-handed shots. I think probably a little more toward later in the first round it’s probably a little more so with forwards.”
After the draft concludes Saturday, the focus will immediately turn to free agency, which opens Monday. With the possibility of draft-night trades as teams around the league get to work, Washington’s roster could look quite different by then.
And with the salary cap for the 2024-25 season increasing to $88 million — up from $83.5 million this past year — Washington’s plan to be aggressive is supported by room with which to operate.
“We have a little bit of room,” MacLellan said. “The cap went up, and we have draft capital, so it makes it easier to make things happen.”
