Kuznetsov’s return forces roster moves
Boyd gets put on waivers, 2 others heading to minors
WASHINGTON — The return of Evgeny Kuznetsov — and his $7.8 million salary-cap hit — to the Washington Capitals roster forced the organization to make multiple salary cap-related roster moves Sunday.
With Kuznetsov officially back on the books after serving his three-game leagueissued suspension for “inappropriate conduct,” the Capitals would have been a little more than $1.6 million above the salary- cap threshold for the season, according to CapFriendly.com. So Washington made three moves to clear enough space to activate Kuznetsov: sending 20year- old defenseman Martin Fehervary (who does not need to clear waivers) down to the team’s American Hockey League affiliate in Hershey, Pennsylvania; placing forward Travis Boyd on waivers; and reassigning waiver-exempt defenseman Jonas Siegenthaler to the AHL in what amounts to a paper transaction.
Kuznetsov will eat up $7,632,258 in cap space, with the four days he missed essentially saving the team $168,000, according to CapFriendly. However, the organization still needed $669,661 of space to activate Kuznetsov, which is why the Caps placed Boyd, who has an $800,000 cap hit, on waivers.
But Boyd won’t clear waivers or get claimed by another team until noon on Monday, and his cap hit remains on the books until then, so the team reassigned Siegenthaler to Hershey, according to the AHL transactions wire. Siegenthaler isn’t physically going to Hershey, but since he doesn’t have to be exposed to waivers, the team can use his absence to free up the missing cap space — he has a salary-cap hit of $714,166 — until Monday, when Boyd comes off the roster. At that point, Siegenthaler will be recalled, and he’s expected to play Tuesday against the Dallas Stars.
“Obviously, there are lots of cap-related decisions from our end,” Capitals coach Todd Reirden said Saturday night after the team’s 3-2 overtime loss to the Carolina Hurricanes.
“They are going to be difficult ones. We just prolonged, for three games, some stuff that was coming down the road for us. That’s kind of the world we’ve been living in: trying to figure out what works best for us and how we can do the best thing for our organization.”
The return of Kuznetsov as the team’s second-line center will send Lars Eller back to center the third line and leave Chandler Stephenson out of his current position on the third line. It is plausible Stephenson could fight for a spot on the fourth line, but that has been the Capitals’ most consistent trio the last couple games, with Nic Dowd centering Brendan Leipsic and Garnet Hathaway. Hathaway recorded his first goal as a Capital on Saturday night and Leipsic recorded his first point with an assist on Hathaway’s goal.
For Stephenson, Sunday’s roster moves offer some relief. He was considered the odd man out at the start of training camp after the team brought in three bottom-six forwards in the offseason, and his salarycap hit of $1.05 million appeared too high for a team facing financial constraints.
However, his strong play in training camp put him ahead of Boyd for the third-line center role while Kuznetsov served his suspension.
“He knew the challenge coming into it,” Reirden said of Stephenson last week. “Like I said the players would make the decisions for me. In this case, he did with his play.”
Stephenson started to truly make a case to stay on the roster in the team’s preseason meeting with the Hurricanes, recording two primary assists in a 4-3 win. Over four exhibition games, Stephenson had one goal and three assists. He didn’t have any points in the first three regular-season games, averaging 13 minutes 23 seconds of ice time and putting in some time on the penalty kill.
“I want to be here,” Stephenson said after the preseason contest against Carolina. “Washington is the only place that I know. It’s an awesome group of guys, and [I have] nothing but the upmost respect for every single one of them.”
Waiving Boyd is the latest in a series of tough roster calls the Capitals have had to make over the past week. They also reassigned defenseman Christian Djoos and goaltender Pheonix Copley, both of whom were with the team all of last season, to Hershey because of the salary-cap crunch.
The move to send Fehervary down was not performance-related, as both Reirden and general manager Brian MacLellan have been impressed with the young defenseman’s play through three games. Fehervary ($805,833) carried the highest cap-hit between him, Siegenthaler and Tyler Lewington ($675,000).
With defenseman Michal Kempny expected to return in the near future after recovering from a hamstring injury he suffered in April, it seems Fehervary would no longer have a regular spot in the lineup.