I wouldn't do this as Washington.

Absolutely not, I have no qualms about giving up Gersich as part of a deal, but trading a top 4 D that's under contract till 2023 for a middle six winger and a bottom 4 D, both of whom are pending UFA's? Hard pass.

WSH is the clear loser of this trade.

Deadline deal so you'd have to assume Toffoli is scoring 20ish goals. Forbort ain't nothing great but he's solid D been playing 1st line minutes for 2 years. I think it works for both.

I don't think moving Orlov is a viable option. He might have had a "down" year last season, but you have to wonder how much of that was from playing heavy minutes in the playoffs in 2018, and having a short summer after the Stanley Cup victory. If you don't like what you see this season, then maybe move him, or expose him in the expansion draft.

I'd agree that if there's trouble scoring in the bottom six (which seems like a pretty decent chance of occurring), then you make a move at the deadline. I really like the bottom six defensively right now, and if they can score by committee, I think the Caps are okay. The construction of the bottom six as it stands is clearly due to MacLellan and his staff identifying that our bottom six last year did not suppress shots at a high enough rate, and we didn't have enough quality penalty killers. Not to mention, adding some sandpaper in Gudas and Hathaway will hopefully help keep Wilson on the ice and out of the penalty box. Essentially, the Caps are looking at two scoring lines, and two shutdown lines. You can try to project out scoring like:

1st line:
Ovechkin: 35-45 goals
Kuznetsov: 20-30 goals
Wilson: 20-30 goals
Totals: 75 (low end) - 105 (high end)
2nd line:

Vrana: 20-30 goals
Backstrom 15-25 goals
Oshie: 20-25 goals
Totals: 55 (low end) - 80 (high end)

The Caps scored 274 goals last season. If you take the low end here, you're looking at 130 goals just from the top six. If you look at the high end of projections, it's 185 just from your top six. Then you add in some depth scoring, like Eller who had 13 goals last season, and Panik who had 14. Hagelin scored five last season in 61 games, so if he's healthy, you can probably expect close to 10 goals from him. Dowd potted 8 last year.

This isn't even accounting for scoring from the defensive corps, where you could probably see Carlson getting 15-20 goals, Kempny who can add a few, and Orlov - who should have a bounce back season. His shot is too good to only notch 3 goals again.

All in all, even if you have just above league average scoring, you can be a good team if you suppress shots and be a top 5 team defensively. That's what this roster looks like it's constructed to do. That and Holtby should have some sparkling stats if he's not getting shellacked with high danger chances all the time.