Red weekend will go down in franchise history, and hockey history. We are pleased to announce that we have reached agreement upon three deals, with Edmonton, Ottawa and Toronto.
The first trade is with the leaves, it was clear to me over the last stretch of games that we needed to add to our forward group. We acquired a world-class talent in Patrick Sharp. We believe he has the ability to carry a team on any given night due to his skills and leadership abilities. To get a player like Patrick, you have to pay a large price... And we did, John Carlson and Dmitri Orlov. First off, I would like to thank both players for their hard work and contributions to the Washington Capitals. John in my opinion, is a young top pair dman and Dmitri will flourish into a top four dman.
"I'm very excited to be heading to Washington, this is where I was hoping I'd end up." - Patrick Sharp
The second trade we completed we decided we needed someone to fill in Carlson's spot on the backend. We preferred a defensive guy, and that is what we got in Luke Schenn. Luke has played to an extremely high level and is one of the very best shutdown dmen in the entire league. We also acquired a young C prospect, Travis has been playing well as the oilers 4th line C, but we will be developing him in the American League. I would like to thank Paul Stastny and Eric Tangradi for their time here, we believe Paul is a top line centre, while Eric will develop into a third line role type of player, that winning teams need to have.
The final trade of the weekend was the biggest. Washington trades away out captain, Alex Ovechkin. Alex in my mind is a top two player in the world, and will flourish in Ottawa playing with a guy like Logan Couture. I would like to thank Ovy for being the best Capital ever.... We acquired Mark Scheifele, Marian Hossa, Milan Michalek and Cameron Gaunce. We believe Mark can be the best Capital there ever was in time, we think he's already the best under 23 centre in the league and he will continue to improve. Marian Hossa has chemistry with Sharp, and watching the two Allstars on the wings of Scheifele is going to be very exciting. Michalek is a top line player on most leagues in the team, we are very excited to add him to our forward group. Cameron is already an NHL player, but we believe he will develop into a top four dman.
As of right now, there is no captain and it is up to the coach when that will be announced. Thank you for coming.
