McPhee called all the teams and offered to pick who they wanted for draft picks. In two cases, he took on a five million dollar cap hit for a player who is not expected to play, in exchange for a first round pick and a roster player. Orpik, Chorney and a first should have been more than enough to keep Schmidt, and maybe even leave salary cap space for Johansson.

These are just half of the UFAs Vancouver added this summer. I decided the Caps could pass on MDZ, and Nilsson, and still call it an amazing haul. These aren't superstars, but Gagner scored about fifty points with Columbus last year. He was drafted just behind Alzner, but Mike Gartner told me he'd probably have picked Gagner, so I've always thought it would be cool to see him play with the Caps. Instead of losing three solid defensemen and a top six winger, if the Caps had done enough research to figure out their salary cap situation, they could have lost two solid defensemen, given away two shaky ones, and added a top six center who has previously scored seven points in one game, at a ridiculously low cap hit. Wiercioch is a shaky offensive defenseman, but he's got enough experience that he can play 15 minutes a night if none of the rookies take his spot. Or, he could, if he weren't in Vancouver. I actually don't like some of the moves Vancouver's current management team has made: Loui Eriksson is way past his prime, and has had too many injuries to be counted on in a top line role. His contract hamstrings them. But this particular summer, they did a wonderful job of talking to their guys, figuring out who would work in what role for what sort of a contract, and making a plan to build from there. The last couple years, Washington has done that, but not this year. I wonder what happened.