Washington Capitals GM Reveals Trade Plans After Missing Out on Nikolaj Ehlers

The Washington Capitals missed out on some big names in free agency, and now their GM has revealed their plans to improve the team as a result.

This off-season has been full of moves, but one team that has been quiet has been the Washington Capitals, who come off a surprising 2024/25 campaign that ended in heartbreak in the second round.

That comes off a summer in 2024 where they made plenty of intriguing additions to their team, but this off-season has been slow for them thus far, with the team missing out on Nikolaj Ehlers, their top free agency target.

General Manager Chris Patrick has addressed that on Saturday, noting that the team were looking for some big names, but simply couldn't find anyone at a price that made sense to them.

'Some big names came off the board that would have been interesting for our group that we were evaluating, stayed with their current teams, and I think we looked to try to do something big and it didn't go our way.'

So what is his plan? According to Patrick, the organization need to be prudent about the way they spend their draft picks moving forward in order to acquire assets, hinting that their improvement could come from the youth already in the organization.

'You never want to say nothing's possible, but we got to the point fairly early in free agency where we'd be looking at names, and it was, 'Is this guy better than X young player in our organization?' That's what we're kind of weighing.

We're at a point where if we're bringing in a guy just to bring in a guy because he's played in the NHL before, he's going to end up blocking one of our younger guys that might end up having a bigger, more positive impact on the team.'

With the likes of Andrew Cristall and Ethen Frank among others potentially ready to step up, the Capitals will continue to look for options on the trade market, but if they can't find anything that makes sense at their price, don't be surprised to see some young names in big roles next season.