On the Washington Capitals …
Chuck Gormley of CSN Mid Atlantic: Capitals GM Brian MacLellan on his offseason wish list.
“I’m pretty content with the core. I think the 9th, 10th forward are where we’re going to look to improve.”
MacLellan on if he regrets not being more aggressive at the trade deadline.
“I don’t know that that type of player was out there. We were restricted because we had a contract situation (Brooks Laich), and most of our conversations were based on taking a contract back to add a guy. And I mean, sometimes the timing doesn’t work out as far as getting that contract out, it doesn’t align with conversations you have, trying to trade for players, and that was the case this year. I mean, we had some conversations of guys we had interest in, as long as they would take the one contract back, and teams weren’t interested, and then we finally traded the contract and it didn’t line up perfectly, timing wise. I mean, we did try to address it.”
MacLellen on the chances of re-signing pending unrestricted free agent Jason Chimera.
“Yeah, there’s a chance. I mean, I think our priorities are going to be our restricted guys. I think everything will fall into place off of that, depending on what level of salary we need to get our guys signed and what do we have left and what his contract demands are. I mean, we’re going to have to weigh all those options out, and what the free agent market’s going to look like, too, we think, salary-wise. We’re going to have to balance all those things out, whether we bring him back or not.”
Isabelle Khurshudyan of the Washington Post: Jason Chimera on if he thinks he’ll be back next season.
“I still think I’m going to be back,” Chimera said. “I’m not confident in anything. In this game, I think you’re not guaranteed anything to be back. I want to be back. You don’t think of playing anywhere else. You know the business side of it, but I still don’t think I’m going to play anywhere else, but you’ll see what happens, right?”
One thing working for Chimera is that despite being 37-years old, he’s one of their fastest skaters. If he does move on, he wants to be on a contender.
“I’m not putting a number on it,” Chimera said of retirement. “I think you’ll know the writing’s on the wall when you’re kind of walking out the door. I haven’t seen any writing yet, so hopefully I don’t see any in the near future.”