Oshie Gets Max Term in DC

Well, as if the entry draft day needed any more intrigue and/or excitement, the Washington Capitals did their best, throwing their hat into the ring, signing forward T.J. Oshie to a new 8-year contract extension on Friday.  If you're new around here, this is the maximum amount of term allowed by the CBA and it is accompanied by an annual cap hit of $5.75 million, a $46 million total.

The 30-year old forward was scheduled to become an unrestricted free agent next weekend, but is now locked in with the Capitals, where he has made himself a decent fit, but has still yet to really wow anyone in the US capital.

Last season, Oshie scored 33 goals and 56 points in only 68 games for Washington, which was good enough for 75th overall in pool scoring, 52nd among all forwards and if he could string together a full season, those numbers could look much better.

Forwards	Cap	Defense	Cap	Goalies	Cap
Alex Ovechkin	9.538	Matt Niskanen	5.750	Braden Holtby	5.100
Nicklas Backstrom	6.700	John Carlson	3.967	Vitek Vanecek	0.714
T.J. Oshie	5.750	Brooks Orpik	5.500
Marcus Johansson	4.583	Taylor Chorney	0.800
Lars Eller	3.500	Kristofers Bindulis	0.793
Tom Wilson	2.000	Madison Bowey	0.695
Jay Beagle	1.750	Aaron Ness	0.613
Riley Barber	0.925
Jakub Vrana	0.863
Garrett Pilon	0.776
Nathan Walker	0.650
Tyler Graovac	0.625
Zach Sill	0.613

So, it's a rough looking preliminary roster, well before the draft and the free agency window opening, but the Capitals are not in terrible shape, even with the Oshie deal under wraps.  Certainly, giving the player term helped with the cap number, but with this current 22-man roster above, subject to change mightily before opening night, it has $12.8 million in cap space to work with.  The Capitals still have Evgeny Kuznetsov, Andre Burakovsky, Dmitry Orlov and Philipp Grubauer still to sign, so it probably isn't a lot of money to work with, but with the way trades have been working this summer, anything is possible.