Washington Capitals State of the Union Address

Today the Washington Capitals held the annual state of the union address with their season ticket holders in attendance as well as some members of the media that cover the Captials. It was a somber atmosphere in the room due to the crushing loss at the hands of their division rival Carolina Hurricanes in the first round of the playoffs in 6 games. The games were close, 3 of the 4 loses to the Canes was by only one goal while the other one was a 4-0 loss at home. One person that appears happy with the season is the owner, who lined his pockets by maximizing the revenue during the 1st round forcing Carolina to come back to Washington for game 6.

"First off I'd like to thank you, the fans, for coming out and supporting us this season, we had sell-outs for nearly every game." Started GM Jared Mitchell. "I'd also like to thank Ken Hitchcock and his staff on making the playoffs this year despite the pressure from teams surging below us. It was a hard fight to just make the playoffs this year due to our division getting their ducks in a row and competing. I've had a breif exit interview with Hitch, I don't know what he has planned next year as far as retirement goes, but we'll cross that bridge when we get there. For now we have some very important roster decisions to make, like re-signing some key players like UFA's Anze Kopitar and Rick Nash as well as RFA's Andrei Vasilevskiy and Sean Couturier among others."

On top of the coaches contract running out, the team has 10 UFA's to replace. Kopitar and Nash have had franchise tags placed on them, so there is a good chance they will be with the team next season, but that still leaves quite a few holes to fill. This is how the roster will look next year with only franchise players, RFA's and prospects returning:

Ondrej Palat - Anze Kopitar - Rick Nash

Anders Lee - Sean Couturier - Tobias Reider

Sonny Milano - Thomas Plekanec - J.T. Compher

Matt Nieto - Justin Kloos - Christian Thomas

Kevin Roy

Jay Bouwmeester - Rasmus Ristolainen

Ian McCoshen - Aaron Ekblad

Nick Jensen - Jordan Schmaltz

Paul Postma

Andrei Vasilevskiy

Spencer Martin