Caps Nail Down Carlson

With the free agency period quickly approaching, the NHL has opened the window, where teams can start talking to other unrestricted free agents and that may have really motivated the Washington Capitals to follow through with their intentions to re-sign John Carlson.  The team announced on Sunday evening that the NHL's top scoring blueliner had re-signed with the club, inking a 8-year, $64 million deal, making him one of the highest-paid at his position.

Carlson finished the regular season with 15 goals and 68 points in all 82 games for the Capitals and then was very instrumental in the Capitals' Stanley Cup championship run, scoring 5 goals and 20 points in 24 games.  The market for top end defensemen is very lucrative for the players, if you can get there and now Carlson ranks among the top three in defensemen cap hits, with $8 million per season.

Washington understood the need to have Carlson signed up and just how much it was going to cost them, so that was the main reason why they moved Brooks Orpik and Philipp Grubauer to the Avalanche before the draft, it was just that important.

Forwards	Cap	Defense	Cap	Goalies	Cap
Alex Ovechkin	9.538	John Carlson	8.000	Braden Holtby	5.100
Evgeny Kuznetsov	7.800	Matt Niskanen	5.750	Ilya Samsonov	0.925
Nicklas Backstrom	6.700	Dmitry Orlov	5.100
T.J. Oshie	5.750	Jonas Siegenthaler	0.714
Lars Eller	3.500	Tyler Lewington	0.675
Andre Burakovsky	3.000	Aaron Ness	0.650
Brett Connolly	1.500	Christian Djoos	0.650
Shane Gersich	0.925
Hampus Gustafsson	0.884
Jakub Vrana	0.863
Brian Pinho	0.834
Garrett Pilon	0.745
Chandler Stephenson	0.650
Nathan Walker	0.650

With all of these moves done and a projected roster of 23 players, the Capitals are sitting in pretty good shape, heading towards the free agent frenzy, still with $8.6 million in space, just enough that they can tinker with what they have and really push towards repeating as Stanley Cup champions.