NHL Network: David Pagnotta on NHL Tonight last week on Washington Capitals and they search for a top-six scoring forward.
** NHLRumors.com transcription
Host: “You have the lovely green grass behind you. The grass isn’t always greener someplace else for Tom Wilson. He stays long-term in Washington. A seven-year extension.
What’s the next step for the Caps after getting that big deal done?”
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Pagnotta: “Yeah, I mean that was a priority for them. They had some teams calling, knocking on the door saying, ‘hey, how would this look if you wanted to consider moving him,’ and they were just dead set on making it happen despite some interest from other clubs.
But now it shifts. Now it goes to their top-six, and Brian MacLellan they’re general manager acknowledging and admitting publicly that they’re still in the market for a top-six winger.
They want to add more offense to this club and continue to push them back into contender status and into the post season. This is a club that doesn’t have some cap flexibility.
So they’re looking at moving out a player and a forward like Anthony Mantha who has his cap hit at a little over $5 million. They want to be able to perhaps swap him out, maybe add to a deal in order to bring somebody else in that can go into their top-six.
Now they signed Max Pacioretty but with his injury concerns and we don’t know exactly the full extent of his health and when he’ll be able to enter the lineup at full steam. They want to create some options.
So they’re looking at bringing in a top-six goal scorer and it’s something MacLellan would prefer to do before camp gets underway. We’ll see if they can pull that off but they’re going to have to get creative in making it happen.”
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