Maybe you haven’t noticed that the Washington Capitals are surging. That’s OK, because everybody is surging in the Metropolitan Division.
The Capitals have won four consecutive games. Not bad, anywhere else in the league. In the Metro? That’s the fourth-longest winning streak. The Philadelphia Flyers are currently at nine games. The Pittsburgh Penguins won their sixth consecutive game in routing the Arizona Coyotes on Monday, pulling even with the Columbus Blue Jackets' current win streak.
So the Capitals have been a bit under the radar, and that’s fine. They’re a team that probably couldn’t impress us in the first two months of the season. If they were the best team in the league in October and November, they would have been mocked as another version of a Capitals team that can win the easy ones but not when it matters most. They avoided that by being pretty average. That’s a good way to avoid notice in today’s NHL.
Now they’re coming. Coach Barry Trotz described his team as being more in concert with one another while meeting with reporters in Washington on Monday.
Evgeny Kuznetsov has also rediscovered his game.
“He’s starting to use his biggest asset -- his ability to skate,” Trotz said. “He’s skating at a higher level. When he’s doing that, his drive train is high the last couple games. He’s winning those battles, taking pucks to areas. His skill comes out. Therefore, he’s creating more. He’s more dangerous.”
Exhibit A is the gorgeous pass he made to Justin Williams for the Capitals' second goal in their win over the Canucks on Sunday. Just as it looked as though Kuznetsov had overpassed, Williams buried the shot into the open net.
The Capitals' surge is not a moment too soon considering the power the Metropolitan Division has become. The Capitals have 37 points and a plus-13 goal differential. That’s a point total that puts them No. 7 in the entire NHL. Not bad at all. It also puts them No. 5 in the Metro. Yikes.
It’s shaping up to be a horse race in that division, so the timing is good for the Capitals to find their game.
It’s also interesting timing because the Capitals are entering the backstretch of the two-year window that GM Brian MacLellan declared open last February. He said he was going for it in 2015-16, going for it in 2016-17 and that he would evaluate where the team stood after that.
While in Florida for the board of governors meetings, I grabbed Capitals owner Ted Leonsis to see how he evaluated this current group as it headed toward the end of that window. He suggested that the two-year window wasn’t necessarily how he approached this era.
“I bet you [MacLellan] would like to walk that back a bit because the team doesn’t feel that. The fans don’t feel that. I do think that like all teams, your veterans start to get a little bit older,” Leonsis answered. “Alex [Ovechkin] and Nick [Backstrom] and that generation of players are in their prime.”
Leonsis also said that the emergence of younger players on the roster over the past year might change the dynamic of the Capitals' window.
“We have a lot of young players like [Andre] Burakovsky and Kuznetsov and [Dmitry] Orlov, and now [Jakub] Vrana,” Leonsis said. “I think we’ll have a period of renewal. What [MacLellan] was talking about, which is fact, is we spend right up to the top of the salary cap. It’s a hard cap. We don’t have a lot of flexibility and when it comes time for some of the veteran players -- how do we keep them?”
That’s undeniable. The renewal of young players in Washington also means those young players are going to get paid. Starting with Kuznetsov.
He’s a restricted free agent after this season. Because he’s 24 years old, he’s only two full seasons away after this one from hitting unrestricted free agency at age 27.
There have been two young centers who have signed contracts that the Capitals and Kuznetsov’s agent can base negotiations on: Mark Scheifele and Aleksander Barkov.
Both are younger and have played more NHL games than Kuznetsov but have had similar production in their NHL careers at center.
Barkov signed a six-year deal worth $5.9 million per season. Of those six years, only two are unrestricted-free-agent seasons bought out by the Panthers.
Scheifele signed an eight-year deal worth $6.125 million per season, with the Jets buying out four years of unrestricted free agency in that deal.
Kuznetsov is more of a challenge because he has only two more full seasons to go before hitting unrestricted free agency. So an eight-year deal between the Capitals and Kuznetsov would include six years of unrestricted free agency.
Teams and agents negotiate long-term deals for younger players by breaking contracts into phases. There is the early bridge-year phase after the entry-level deal, a phase that Kuznetsov is currently serving. Then comes the arbitration phase. Then unrestricted free agency.
So using fairly conservative values for Kuznetsov, this is a rough idea of what his next contract should look like:
Year 1 RFA: $5.5 million
Year 2 RFA: $5.5 million
Year 3 UFA: $7.5 million
Year 4 UFA: $7.5 million
Year 5 UFA: $7.5 million
Year 6 UFA: $7.5 million
Year 7 UFA: $7.5 million
Year 8 UFA: $7.5 million
That’s an eight-year deal worth $56 million, with an average annual value of $7 million.
That would slot his average higher than Nicklas Backstrom's ($6.7 million) and lower than Ovechkin's ($9.54 million) on the Capitals' payroll. It’s also a $4 million raise from his current salary, which, assuming the salary cap is somewhat flat, means $4 million currently spent elsewhere would have to go. And we haven’t even talked about Karl Alzner, an unrestricted free agent who needs a new deal too.
That $4 million raise for Kuznetsov is on par with the contracts of Williams and T.J. Oshie, two players who are unrestricted free agents after this season.
The wild card to Kuznetsov’s negotiations is that he can use the KHL as leverage. It was hard enough for the Capitals to get him over here; they don’t want to drag this out and risk losing him.
On World Cup media day, we were chatting with Kuznetsov about the stalled negotiations involving his friend Nikita Kucherov and the Tampa Bay Lightning. He made no secret how he’d handle a similar situation.
“If I would be in his position, I would be signed in the KHL for sure -- 100 percent,” Kuznetsov said before the season. “That’s not for me [to] wait like that.”
I reminded Leonsis of those comments and asked whether he had any concerns about Kuznetsov and his next contract.
“I’m not concerned about his next deal,” Leonsis said, then he smiled. “I’m concerned about the next game.”
He has less reason to be concerned. Kuznetsov now has five points in his past four games.
As for the veterans, it sounds as if the Capitals are in full wait-and-see mode. Williams is represented by Thane Campbell, and Campbell doesn’t expect any contract talk on that front until after the season.
“I think Washington’s approach will be to play out the year and see how he does and the team does,” Campbell said during a Monday phone conversation. “That makes sense for Justin as well. I don’t think they’re going to trade him. I think they feel they’re a Stanley Cup contender, as Justin does. As a result, I see the year playing out. Justin wants to win in Washington. That’s what he went there for.”
They’re starting to win. Just in time. And while it might not be a true two-year championship window, it’s fair to suggest the team will look different if these Capitals don’t pull it off.