You clearly don’t watch the capitals at all. They were predictable and weren’t able to move the puck up ice or out of the zone. They lacked mobility and this signing addressed that issue. Carlson was hurt Orlov was playing the right side and the coaches put Gudas “a shutdown guy” in and he was basically useless. Sieg and Dillion are good “shutdown” guys and Fehevary is a good skill guy with physical and stick checking abilities. Caps are better now than before.

If you are basing any decisions off this playoffs good luck. No one carried or tried at all.... lmfao read an article they basically treated it like a vacation

in their own end Matheson. believe me he's that bad

Lav is a great defensive coach and Matheson was way way way worse in his own end from what I watched in the playoffs. Both are risky moves but !!! Capitals only risked 2 years... watch highlights on the islanders series and tell me who is better in their own end

eh you keep trying to think this is a comparison between the two.
Matheson was a move to dump horny. They didn't go out and sign him. They hope to rehabilitate and flip most likely.
But Schultz.....come on they went out and signed him.

And he is that bad in his own end. Believe me I know.
If I saw a goal against the penguins, I knew without even seeing the numbers, it's either JJ or Schultz like every time.

Their best bet is to hide him. In the Ozone. Like the penguins did when Letang went down and he got like 65% Ozone starts. That's how you deal with him.

I mean JJ is a terrible D man. Schultz playing w Orlov is way different than him playing w JJ. I’m shocked the Rangers signed him. Either way only time will tell what’s going on.

He was paired with Pettersson far more than with JJ. Expecting defensemen who relied heavily on mobility to rebound after major lower body injuries is never a good bet. We just saw that with Kempny, and we saw it with Green's sports hernia surgery. I hate that we're staking the closing years of Ovie's window in part on the slim chance that Schultz would ever get back to what he once was after shattering his ankle. I haven't been this pissed off by a move since the Forsberg trade.

Seems dramatic. How would you like them to address the defense ? I’m honestly curious. Do you consider Petterson a good defenseman? Do you know Schultz numbers away from JJ vs W him? Spoiler alert his numbers are WAY better without him. Capitals needed mobile Dmen and they went with Schultz. Hardly the same as Forsberg. Who at the time we traded for a 50 point player lol. Forsberg 2 years later turned into a great NHL player. Lmfao watch him be amazing next year. People love to complain.

I'm honestly a pretty big BMac fan, and I've supported most of his moves. There was always some discernible logic to them. I'm still high on Panik, Hagelin, and Jensen even though those have had mixed results. I don't complain for the sake of complaining, this move's just flat out bad. Schultz was never good defensively, and since his injury he's not good offensively either. He had 12 points in 46 games while getting almost 3 minutes a night on a power play with Crosby and Malkin for ****'s sake! How is that even possible? If you don't care about points, the advanced stats community hates him too.

Evolving Wild: "At a 2-year term, we projected $3 million. Schultz in an offensive defenseman who hasn't played much over the last two seasons and has been below replacement level in those minutes."

Micah Blake McCurdy: "Justin Schultz (2x4m with Washington) is simply inexplicable to me."

The quarter of a season he played with Johnson pulls his numbers down, but not so much that the conclusion changes. And the worst part is, according to Pens fans he actually got worse as the season went on, which doesn't inspire any confidence in the idea that he just needs to fully heal from the ankle injury. The fact that his ice time dropped by about a minute in the playoffs and they dumped him with Johnson on the 3rd pairing seems to indicate the Pens realized he was getting worse too.

As for what I'd have done instead, there are a ton of better options available in FA (Vatanen, Tanev, Hamonic, Barrie, Brodie), rumored to be available for trade (Savard, Weegar, Goligoski, Demers, Larsson), or there for the taking via offer sheet (Cernak). I'd much rather have a defensively stable 2RD that can let Orlov join the rush more and play more aggressively and a lot of the guys I named are in that vein, but if the Caps were dead set on pairing Orlov with another puck-mover then Vatanen, Barrie, and Goligoski (with salary retention) all would've been better choices. Maybe a bit more expensive, but they're gonna have to dump salary anyway to fit Schultz so why not spend a bit more to get a guy that's actually good instead of one that you hope might maybe be good again if he can regain the form he had two years ago before he shattered his ankle?

Ham : 49.19CF% 47.92FF% 48.55 xGF% Not signed yet
Brodie: 52.07CF% 51.03FF% 52.69xGF% 5m aav x 4 years
Tanev: 46.47CF% 47.43FF% 46.88xGF% 4.5m aavx 4years
Barie: 53.27 CF% 51.75FF% 50.89xGF% not signed yet But Leaf fans hated him
Schultz: 49.77CF% 51.20FF% 50.88xGF% 4m aav x 2 years (low term)


Attmpt % Scoring chances % high danger % expected goals %
with JJ 44.5 44.4 36.2 41.6
W/o JJ 51.2 49. 52.7 53.2

Penguins Powerplay ranked 8th overall last year.... seems like if he's playing 3 minutes a night (AND ISNT GOOD) on the powerplay he must be doing something to help.... or that 8th for be a lot worse. MAYBE bc the penguins dont run the same type of powerplay as the capitals he isnt getting the 1-2 touch before the puck goes into the net?

Offersheet? okay then we lose draft picks and overpay a player.... that generally how offer sheets work you overpay a player... not smart. Schultz made the most sense and we didnt have to give up any assets or risk 4 years on a 30+ year old player

Yeah, some of those guys are a bit more expensive (Barrie came in at 1x3.75M though and I'd take that over Schultz for 2x4M any day), but the Caps are gonna have to move someone to make room right now regardless, so an extra 0.5-1M doesn't make a huge difference. The extra term's not a huge deal either. Whether a guy signs for 2 years or 4, he's gonna be on the books when the Caps have their cap crunch next offseason. If adding two more years lowers the AAV, why not do it? Especially since the Caps don't have any prospects remotely close to the NHL on the right side.



Here's Gudas from last season with similar statistics.

FF% SCF% HDCF% xGF%
with Kempny 44.97 49.62 38.98 42.71
W/o Kempny 51.23 50.30 51.08 52.20

Now either Kempny's poor play was hiding that Gudas is actually an offensive defenseman, or taking these numbers without any context isn't actually all that informative.



Or they had no one else put there. Only other righty in their lineup was rookie John Marino, and if you check out his college stats it's clear he's not an offensive defenseman. Interestingly, after Schultz came back from his knee injury in December he dropped from 3 minutes a night pre-injury to 2 and a half, while Marino went up from 0:23 to 1:11, so it seems like the Pens were losing faith in Schultz. Anyway, Schultz had plenty of PP points his two full years in Pittsburgh prior to shattering his ankle, so I don't think you can blame the scheme.



Ordinarily I'm not in favor of offer sheets, but this is a special situation. Tampa has no room for their three big RFAs, all their expensive contracts have full NTCs and NMCs, and they couldn't even dump Tyler Johnson by waiving him. If the Caps got Cernak to sign an offer sheet at around 4M per year, there would've been basically no way for Tampa to match it without losing both Sergachev and Cirelli, and the compensation would've been just the 2021 2nd. That was my plan A for this offseason.