The Caps will now be entering tank year #3 of their scorched earth rebuild. They like to think they have made some progress, a lot of it however is from bulk of picks rather than quality. Sure guys like Byfield and Podkolzin are pretty good but the Caps mostly make late round selections and hoping for the best. Still a solid number of 1st rounders as out of the 8 1st round picks they’ve used over the last 3 drafts, they still have 7. This offseason though it seems the Caps have really given their rebuild a shot in the arm.

To start it off the Caps are hoping they got a future vet leader for their top 6 in Taylor Hall. We’ve already done an article on him and his championship pedigree in CDNHL so we don’t have to dive into that. But just imagine a top line in the future with Hall and Byfield, both are top tier skaters so it’d be fun to see. What really helped the Caps though for their rebuild was signing forwards Brayden Schenn, Chris Kreider, and Craig Smith. In total for trading these 3 guys away (along with Joel Armia) the Caps accumulated the following picks

2 2023 1sts

1 2022 3rd

1 2023 3rd

1 2024 3rd

2 2022 4ths

1 2022 5th

On the outside people may think “that return don’t look to sexy especially since those picks likely aren’t lotto”. But at the same time what the Caps desperately needed was too add 1st round caliber prospects to their top heavy core, as seen with them trading 7th overall for 2 more picks in this past draft, so a couple extra 1sts for sure helps with that. Not to mention some picks like Brett Berard and Tristen Robins are already looking good for the Caps so adding more picks outside the 1st round is nice. In total over the next 2 drafts the Caps have 24 picks, if none of those are pro level players then the Caps GM should be fired. However, there will likely be at least a couple of pro players there so adding them to the young core will help. As of right now the Caps future looks bright and hopefully these extra picks will help with the future dynasty.