Slight Overstatement of the Day 2: Caps Focus on Keeping Alzner

After shedding Fehr’s salary, Caps’ focus shifts to keeping Alzner

So claims the headline in the Washington Times.

Actually, the Caps are probably a little more focused on their development camp, where they are spending this week evaluating a lot of potential future Capitals.

Alzner is a restricted free agent. In hundreds of restricted free agencies, only one player has changed hands by signing an unmatched offer sheet. Only six offer sheets have even been submitted.

While every team in the NHL would love to have Karl Alzner, the only way they could get him through restricted free agency would be to sign him to a contract the Capitals could not match. That would have to be for enough money that they'd wind up giving back three or four high draft choices. If a team was looking to give up that much, they could probably find a better deal by just trading for Alzner.

Since no trades have materialized, it's reasonably safe to assume that the restrictions have trumped the free agency in this case. That means that all the Caps have to do is give Alzner enough of a raise that he feels valued and wants to stay in Washington the next time he is a free agent. By trading away Eric Fehr, they have made room to do this.

Now all that remains is the formality of letting Alzner and his decline a paltry qualifying offer so they can feel like they've got all the leverage they can get out of the situation. Then the two sides wait another week or so, sit down together, meet in the middle of their salary expectations, and give the kid a couple million dollars a year to play a really fun game on a world-class team.