{"id":109032,"date":"2025-08-31T03:19:06","date_gmt":"2025-08-31T03:19:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/109032\/"},"modified":"2025-08-31T03:19:06","modified_gmt":"2025-08-31T03:19:06","slug":"inside-look-at-washington-capitals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/109032\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside look at Washington Capitals"},"content":{"rendered":"

Washington tried to add a forward through unrestricted free agency to play on one of its top two lines, but after that fell through, it re-signed forward Anthony Beauvillier<\/a> to a two-year contract July 3 and decided to stick with what it had. Following the departures of unrestricted free agent forwards Andrew Mangiapane<\/a> (Edmonton Oilers), Lars Eller<\/a> (Ottawa Senators) and Taylor Raddysh<\/a> (New York Rangers), the Capitals plan to give young players such as Ryan Leonard<\/a>, 20; Ivan Miroshnichenko<\/a>, 21; Andrew Cristall<\/a>, 20; and Hendrix Lapierre<\/a>, 23, a chance to show what they can do in training camp and early in the season, and then assess if they need to make a trade.<\/p>\n

“If it’s not working or if we feel like the team is in a spot where we need to add a veteran guy, then we’ll go out and be aggressive to do that,” general manager Chris Patrick said. “But I think we need to see what we have with some of these guys and then make our decisions based off that. I feel pretty confident in the team around them.”<\/p>\n

Patrick has reason to feel that way; among those to fit in perfectly with the Capitals last season was center Pierre-Luc Dubois<\/a>, who responded after being acquired in a trade with the Los Angeles Kings on June 19, 2024, by setting an NHL career high with 66 points (20 goals, 46 assists) in 82 games.<\/p>\n

Defenseman Jakob Chychrun<\/a>, acquired in a trade with the Senators on July 1, 2024, established NHL career highs in goals (20) and points (47), and goalie Logan Thompson<\/a>, acquired in a trade with the Vegas Golden Knights on June 29, 2024, set NHL career bests in wins (31) and goals-against average (2.49) in 43 games.<\/p>\n

Other Washington players to set League career highs last season included forwards Aliaksei Protas<\/a> (66 points; 30 goals, 36 assists), Tom Wilson<\/a> (65 points; 33 goals, 32 assists), Connor McMichael<\/a> (57 points; 26 goals, 31 assists) and Nic Dowd (14 goals, 27 points). But with those statistical breakouts come questions about whether those players can duplicate or exceed what they accomplished last season.<\/p>\n

Patrick said he believes those questions will provide motivation this season.<\/p>\n

“I think there’s some hunger there for guys to show that, ‘We’re continuing to build our games and improve,'” he said. “‘Yeah, it was a career year numbers-wise, but I still have more to give.'”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Washington tried to add a forward through unrestricted free agency to play on one of its top two…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":109033,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-109032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109032"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109032\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/109033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}