The Washington Capitals signed Dylan Strome to a 5 year extension yesterday. The deal comes with a cap hit of $5.0M. Let’s dig into the deal.
Individual Performance
Strome seems to have finally found a home in Washington after bouncing around the league over the past few seasons. He’s performed close to the model’s projected rates this season and profiles as a borderline 2nd/3rd line forward midway through the season.
At age 25, Strome is just entering his prime and it’s reasonable to expect his impact to hold steady through the length of the 5 year deal. Preliminary projections for the 23/24 season show Strome as a third line forward. The most likely outcome is that the Capitals have locked up a third line forward through his prime seasons.
Capitals Roster Roadmap
We’ll look at the Capitals roster using the Roster Regeneration framework as a guideline to get a sense of both their short term and long term situations.
The Capitals roster is good enough to compete this season which is reflected in their current roster profile. They currently sit in a wild card spot, so they’re in no position to sell at the deadline despite the fact that they have a large number of pending UFAs on the roster.
The long term outlook is less promising. Much of the current core is into their 30s where we can expect some age related decline to start occurring. Following the Roster Regeneration framework, we’d like to see a new core group emerging in their mid 20s ready to take over leadership of the team. That group is not really in place and, instead, the Capitals have a few players in their late 20s that look like part of a core. We would also like to see a future core forming with prospects age 20 and under. The Capitals prospect pool is ranked 28th in the Hockey Prospecting model, so that’s clearly an area that needs some attention.
With a number of pending UFAs on this season’s roster, it would behoove the Capitals to try to add some youth to their roster for next season. That may be easier said than done with a meager prospect pool but they do have some cap space to work with given the high number of pending UFAs on this year’s team.
The Verdict
The Capitals locked up Strome through his prime seasons, which seems like somewhat of a win. He’s at the start of his prime and fits the age profile we’d like to see for a new emerging core. The cap hit seems like a hefty investment though, given Strome’s projected impact as a third line forward through that timeframe. Strome also becomes the first Capitals player under contract for the 27/28 season.
The Capitals are nearing the end of the line with their current core and they need to prioritize adding and retaining some younger players to avoid massive drop off in the coming seasons. Strome fits that age profile, but his projected impact simply isn’t high enough to be a difference maker on a contender. Is seems fair to wonder if this signing needed to happen before the summer when the Capitals could have investigated other options.
Historical player data from Natural Stat Trick. Contract data from CapFriendly.
