Monday at 5:00 p.m. ET marked the deadline for NHL teams to submit qualifying offers to their restricted free agents. Right around the deadline, the Washington Capitals’ PR Twitter account dropped a bomb: the team has elected not to give goaltender Ilya Samsonov a qualifying offer, which would’ve come in at $2M. He will become an unrestricted free agent Wednesday.
The Capitals had already traded one half of their NHL goaltending battery, Vitek Vanecek, to the New Jersey Devils last week. With Samsonov going to market, they now have no NHL netminders on the books, fuelling speculation that they’re one of the top suitors for reigning Stanley Cup winner Darcy Kuemper, who will not be returning to the Colorado Avalanche after they traded for Alexandar Georgiev last week.
Samsonov, 25, was a Capitals first-round pick, No. 25 overall, in a loaded 2015 class. Earning rave reviews from scouts for his size and power in the net, he rose up Washington’s system as one of the truly elite goaltending prospects in the game. He looked the part of future star for them in 2019-20, posting a .913 save percentage across 26 appearances and 22 starts as a rookie and earning two fifth-place Calder Trophy votes. But he landed in COVID-19 protocol early in the 2020-21 season and struggled to find a rhythm after that. Over the past two seasons, he’s struggled to the tune of an .898 save percentage across 63 appearances and 57 starts. Per Natural Stat Trick, among 69 goalies who played at least 1,000 minutes at 5-on-5 over that span, Samsonov ranked 62nd in goals saved above average per 60 minutes, grading out as one of the worst goaltenders in the league. He was the goalie of record for three of Washington’s four defeats in its first-round loss to the Florida Panthers in the 2022 playoffs.
Samsonov can technically still re-sign with the Capitals as a UFA, but he was an RFA with arbitration rights and expected to come in at an AAV north of $3M, so the decision was a financial one, notes Tarik El-Bashir of The Athletic.
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