McPhee tackles primary goal — then falls into fortune

On July 1, 2010, the Capitals were coming off a hugely disappointing year in which they bowed out of the playoffs in the first round to the Montreal Canadiens in seven games after a 121-point regular season. The regular season saw the Capitals capture the Presidents’ Trophy, as well as raise the interest in hockey in Washington, DC, to levels most didn’t think were possible just three years prior.

With fans upset about the outcome of the playoffs, general manager George McPhee stood pat with his club during free agency — there were no key departures, nor were there any key additions. McPhee probably decided that it was justified to give the players on his squad one more shot, and overreacting to one playoff ouster was not in the long-term interest in the club. I theorized that McPhee was correct to stand pat on a practical level in terms of the salary cap, as well. McPhee didn’t have a whole lot of cap room to work with, so why spend that on a middling free agent when you can save that cash for the trade deadline when you probably know the holes on your roster a bit better than you did in July?

Twelve months later, McPhee was staring at another early-round flameout in the playoffs, this time in the second round – a sweep at the hands of the Tampa Bay Lightning. The Capitals had once again finished in first place in the Eastern Conference, albeit in more up-and-down fashion than the previous year. The season featured an eight-game losing streak, an HBO appearance and the Winter Classic. After the second round loss, chatter had grown very loud about the job security of Bruce Boudreau (including in this space), who had presided over four consecutive early-round flameouts.

Amidst all the early-round tumbles and failures, there was one common thread in particular, which reflected poorly on the players, the coaches and the entire organization.

The Washington Capitals were a dreadfully fragile hockey team.

Once one aspect of the game fell apart in the playoffs – falling behind in the score reasonably late in the game, for instance – the entire effort went to hell. Adjustments were not made in the Montreal or Tampa series when the overall game-plan broke down (such as constantly not being able to break either team’s trap), or when the power play was ineffective. Whether this was Boudreau’s fault for not making the proper adjustments or whether it was the players’ faults for not executing the adjustments is largely immaterial – it was probably some of both, and it doesn’t reflect well on either party.

Oh, and there were other issues within either series, with one of the bigger issues being the club’s star players not playing like stars. Vinny Lecavalier, Martin St. Louis and Steven Stamkos skated circles around and out-produced Alex Ovechkin, Nicklas Backstrom and Alexander Semin in the Tampa series.

After the previous two postseasons, the Capitals’ issues became painfully clear. Even if it seemed like McPhee didn’t have a lot of cap room to be active in free agency, or that his roster seemed relatively set (especially on defense), McPhee probably knew he needed to shake up the team. He needed to attack the team’s issues.

So he did.

Priority No. 1 seemed to have been to answer the riddle that is the team’s fragility. McPhee traded his 2011 first round pick (the 26^th overall pick in a weak draft) for former Blackhawk Troy Brouwer on the night of the draft. On July 1, McPhee added old friend Jeff Halpern on a one-year deal to replace the departing Boyd Gordon and former Nashville Predator Joel Ward (four years, $12 million) to presumably mostly play the wing on the third line. Former Montreal Canadien Roman Hamrlik then signed on with the Capitals (two years, $7 million) to probably play about 20 minutes per night and to take some pressure off the young shoulders of John Carlson and Karl Alzner, at least in terms of nightly minutes.

As Japers’ Rink indicated after the additions on July 1, the message of McPhee was clear: It wasn’t Boudreau’s fault, but rather, this was on the players. McPhee obviously believes that Boudreau has what it takes to match wits with coaches like Guy Boucher in the playoffs, but that the players Boudreau was coaching were unable – or unwilling – to execute adjustments, whether such adjustments are related to even strength play or the power play.

In Brouwer, Halpern, Ward and Hamrlik, the Capitals got what they were probably looking for – leadership. The Capitals added a bundle of postseason experience with Ward and Hamrlik, with the former being nearly a point-per-game player in the postseason. Stanley Cup experience was added at the draft in Brouwer, who won a Cup with Chicago in 2010 and is known as something of a leader. Four new faces added from the night of the draft to July 1, as well as the re-signing of Brooks Laich – quite of transformation from last summer’s quietness.

With those added intangibles, the Capitals are probably hoping that the club becomes more accustomed to being able to make adjustments on the fly in the postseason. I usually believe that the leadership stuff thrown around is overrated – and it probably is – but given the Capitals’ failures in the postseason and how they targeted some of their summer additions makes it seem as if one of McPhee’s aims was to find that intangible that the Capitals had been missing. McPhee seems to have been after that playoff player that will hopefully rub off on the entire roster, especially the team’s stars.

Again, I’m not big on explaining what it means to have to the intangible of leadership and “knowing how to win” in the NHL. I’ve never played a high level of hockey. I’m not in the Capitals’ locker room. But it’s obvious why these four moves were made, and each of their impacts – whether large or small – won’t be felt until April 2012. But the most noteworthy moves from McPhee weren’t those four additions. It was the series of changes made in the crease.

No one doubts Semyon Varlamov’s talent. When the young man took to the crease for the Capitals, he almost always gave the squad in front of him a chance to win. He had a flair for the dramatic jaw-dropping save, none greater than the save made on Sidney Crosby during Game 1 of the second round of the 2009 playoffs. His 2010-’11 statistics – a .924 save percentage and 2.23 goals-against average – compare favorably with the best goalies in the NHL.

But there were a couple catches: Varlamov has struggled staying healthy, and has had multiple bouts with groin injuries. Over the past two years, Varlamov played in just 53 regular season games. Part of that is because there were others (Jose Theodore and Michal Neuvirth) who needed time in net as well, but a large chunk of that missed time can be attributed to injury. If he were healthy for the entirety of the past two years, he would have been superior options to both Theodore and Neuvirth and would probably be staring at the No. 1 job in net come October 2011.

Alas, he was not healthy that entire period of time. Varlamov would have entered the 2011-’12 season battling for time in net with Neuvirth, who started all nine playoff games in the 2011 playoffs. Varlamov, a restricted free agent on July 1, wanted a sizeable extension and the starter’s job in net.* If he didn’t get what he wanted, he’d bolt to Russia to play for the KHL’s SKA Saint Petersburg. If that occurred, the Capitals would see a potential top-flight goaltender and former first round pick walk away with no compensation to show for it.

*UPDATE: This appeared to be the case to me little while ago because it’s always about the money in sports. But Slava Malamud, a person in the know, says that money and guarantees were not the reasons for Varlamov considering the KHL. Malamud says Varlamov just wanted a fresh start at a place other than Washington.

Then, McPhee turned “no compensation” into “highway robbery.” I have no idea how George McPhee got the Colorado Avalanche to give him a 2012 first-rounder and a second-rounder (2012 or 2013) for an oft-injured Varlamov threatening to play in Russia when the Avalanche could have easily made a typical offer sheet to a restricted free agent and given the Capitals only a second-rounder as compensation. I’ll just shake my head in approval.

The Avalanche claim the Capitals would have matched their offer sheet, but Dmitry Chesnokov tweeted that the KHL threats were very real, in which case the Capitals would have probably let the Avalanche sign Varlamov, since the goaltender may very well have bolted to play in Russia rather than split time with Neuvirth in Washington. Now, McPhee has a potential top-10 pick in next year’s draft, as the Avalanche don’t project to be a particularly competitive team in the Western Conference next year. The Capitals should end up adding a top-10 draft prospect next summer to a pipeline of talent that currently holds the likes of Evgeny Kuznetsov and Dmitri Orlov.

McPhee then fell into more fortune. On July 2, the best goaltender on the 2011 free agent market, Tomas Vokoun, was still without a job and was running out of options in terms of landing a job. McPhee already had Neuvirth, clearly a NHL-caliber goaltender, as well as Braden Holtby (who I believe to have a higher ceiling than Neuvirth). Holtby, 22 years of age at the start of the season, probably needed a starter’s workload in Hershey to prepare for life in the NHL.

McPhee could have used a veteran goalie to split time with Neuvirth. Vokoun needed a job after the goalie market shriveled up quickly. McPhee needed a cap-friendly one-year deal. Vokoun, 35, was willing to do that in order to be on a team with a chance to win the Stanley Cup.

It was a match made in heaven for the Capitals. I had dreamed of Vokoun signing a cheap one-year deal with the Capitals once Varlamov was traded, but I never really thought it would come through. It was too good to be true, and Vokoun is such a quality netminder that he had to find a multi-year deal somewhere.

Guess not.

Vokoun’s one year, $1.5 million deal with the Capitals is one of the best values found in free agency this summer – if not, the best. Free agency is in large part about finding value, and the Capitals did that here (even if some argue that they didn’t find value paying what they did for Ward). The Capitals paid $1.5 million for one of the top-five goalies since the lockout. That’s serious value that 29 other general managers are currently shaking their head violently in disbelief towards.

Teams should never delve too far into free agent contracts for goalies in terms of years and dollars for the same reason that baseball teams shouldn’t hand out big contracts to relief pitchers. Goalies are interchangeable and volatile. An individual goalie’s performance has the potential to shift wildly from year to year. An elite goaltender one year can be merely ordinary the next. There are also no currently elite goalies that project to be elite for the foreseeable future. (Yes, Tim Thomas had an incredible year. He’s also 37.)

The difference in terms of quality between Goalie A and Goalie B is very small, just as it is with relievers. And Goalie A could turn into Goalie B overnight without any indication. Which is all to say: go cheap in net and spend money elsewhere on the roster. There’s a much bigger difference between a first-line forward and a third-line forward than there is between a goalie that will get 52 starts a year as opposed to a goalie that will get 30 starts a year.

(The Philadelphia Flyers, however, do not believe this to be true.)

McPhee, thankfully, understands the goaltender market. The money he’s committed to the crease for 2011 is $2.65 million, or about 4.1 percent of the $64.3 million salary cap. If Vokoun ages fast and falls off a cliff, it’s not a big deal. More likely, though, is that the Capitals will split time in net between the two – I’d imagine it’ll be a pretty even split, with maybe a slight edge to Vokoun in terms of playing time – and will receive well above-average goaltending at a ridiculously low price.

The Flyers, meanwhile, well, yeah.

McPhee still has one more task left, and that’s signing restricted free agent Karl Alzner without trading Alexander Semin to create cap space in order to do it. Here’s the deal – according to CapGeek, the Capitals were about $1.8 million over the salary cap with Alzner left to sign before Eric Fehr was traded to Winnipeg for a 2012 fourth round pick and prospect Danick Paquette. One more player would seem to have to be moved in order to fit Alzner under the cap, since they’re now about $400,000 under the cap. Alzner will probably command a deal of more than $2 million per year. The Capitals – for all the locker room transformation they could be undergoing with the additions of Brouwer, Ward, Halpern and Hamrlik – probably want to move someone other than Semin, even though he’s one of the main culprits of disappearing in the playoffs recently and would free up a ton of cap space.

Why? The Capitals didn’t score a ton of goals to begin with last year – 19^th in the NHL in goals per game at 2.67 – and that was with Semin, who scored 28 goals last year and 40 the year before. Trading Semin would make the Capitals’ locker room transformation complete, but at what cost on the ice? The guess here is that the Capitals would rather not find out what that cost is and they’ll try to trade other pieces away. With Fehr now traded, the Capitals don’t need to trade Semin anyway — they’re pretty close to fitting in Alzner as it is.

(Of course, this could have at least partially been avoided if McPhee didn’t re-sign completely replaceable players like Tyler Sloan, John Erskine and Matt Hendricks to extensions, but hey, I think we can all let McPhee slide for that after the robbery he pulled off on Colorado and getting Vokoun for that unbelievable price.)

But this might all work itself out anyhow without anyone on the roster being moved. The Capitals don’t have to be at the salary cap until Opening Night, and can carry $70.73 million on their roster until that point, according to Mike Vogel. The Capitals will probably re-sign Alzner to a deal soon and see where they are in terms of the cap. After that, they can afford to wait it out, as a ton of things can happen with the roster between now and the beginning of the regular season.

One of the dominoes that has to fall is the situation regarding Tom Poti, who battled injuries all last year and has his career on the line, according to McPhee. Poti carries a $2.875 million cap hit for each of the next two seasons, but that cap hit could be nullified depending on what turn his career next takes. Which is to say, by October, these salary cap concerns could be a distant memory.

As inactive as George McPhee was last summer is as active as he was this summer. McPhee knew he could no longer stand pat. With one pointed goal – finding leadership on the free agent market – and by falling into a lot of luck – Colorado trading away a potential top-10 pick and Tomas Vokoun needing a job – McPhee may very well have had the best off-season of any general manager thus far.