How strong are Caps at center with and without Kuznetsov? originally appeared on NBC Sports Washington
Even as Alex Ovechkin hoisted the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP after the Capitals won the Stanley Cup in 2018, anyone watching that spring knew the championship wouldn’t have been possible without the team’s center depth and standout play from Evgeny Kuznetsov.
Now just three years later, with a roster featuring mostly the same faces that hoisted the Cup, the position is a major question mark for the Capitals.
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Nicklas Backstrom isn’t going anywhere, and it appears third and fourth line centers Lars Eller and Nic Dowd aren’t either. But Kuznetsov has been a rumored trade target for inconsistencies on and off the ice. The trio of Backstrom, Eller and Dowd are all over the age of 30, and Connor McMichael, the team’s top prospect, seems to be drawing ever closer to the NHL.
The work for the Capitals now is to figure out how strong they are down the middle, and if there’s any room for improvement.
“You need your best players playing at center, and you need to slot them right if you want to contend for a Cup,” general manager Brian MacLellan said at the beginning of the offseason. “Boston had health with their four guys, and they played well. Krejci played well, Bergeron played really well and I think that was the key to the series. They played well up the middle and we were thin because of injuries and because of performance."
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The easy part of the center equation in Washington is Backstrom, who has a no-movement clause. He’ll be a Capital for the foreseeable future, as many want.
Everything else, though, is up in the air.
Kuznetsov presents the most intriguing question of not only the team’s center depth, but likely the entire offseason as a whole. If the Capitals choose to hang onto the Russian centerman, who said he wants to stay in D.C., then they’ll likely trot out the four centers they had in the 2020-21 regular season.
If Kuznetsov is on his game, he’s one of the best centers in the league and catapults the Capitals to a dangerous team in the Eastern Conference. If he’s not, his $7.8 million cap hit (which has four years left) becomes a burden rather quickly.
In 41 games this season, he tallied 29 points but was on the COVID-19 list twice as the Capitals relied on T.J. Oshie, Michael Raffl and Eller to take the brunt of the load.
"I think it's the key to our organization what decisions get made or how he plays or how he comes out of this,” MacLellan said. “We won the Stanley Cup because we had a great 1-2 punch and Eller in the third spot, so center depth is important. We need him to play at his highest ability, and if he can't play at his highest ability, we're not going to be a good team and we'd have to make some other decisions."
Should the Capitals trade Kuznetsov, there’d be a gaping hole in the top six at center unless the return was another center who could fit into the top six. How likely that is remains questionable, at best, meaning it might be better for Washington to roll the dice with Kuznetsov back.
But the center everyone wants to talk about has played just one NHL game in his career. McMichael scored 14 goals with 13 assists in 33 games with the Hershey Bears this season and appears ready to make the leap to the NHL full time. The question will be if there’s room for him.
“I think he finished up the year well,” MacLellan said. “I think it's going to be how his offseason goes, what improvements he makes. He's a young guy that we're not going to force into the lineup. We'll see how he does in camp and what he can handle, but he had a really good year. I think he finished up the year on a high, improved in all areas. So we're going to look for opportunities to play him, but we're not going to force him into a situation he can't handle.”
The Capitals still have Backstrom and an excellent bottom-six duo of Eller and Dowd. Paired with McMichael, the Capitals remain deep down the middle organizationally.
But if Kuznetsov leaves without a top-six center to replace him, the true high-end talent will have left the organization. There will still be depth available to coach Peter Laviolette, but the Capitals likely can't seriously contend for a Cup without a one-two punch at the top of their lineup.
