Capitals Acquire Marcus Johansson

Earlier today, it was reported that the Capitals were among the teams showing interest in winger Marcus Johansson.  They have indeed landed the veteran in a trade with Seattle, reports TSN’s Chris Johnston (Twitter link).  Samantha Pell of the Washington Post reports (Twitter link) that winger Daniel Sprong and draft picks are going to the Kraken.  Johnston adds (via Twitter) that the picks are a 2022 fourth-rounder and a 2023 sixth-rounder.

The 31-year-old is no stranger to Washington having spent the first seven years of his career there after he was their first-round pick (24th overall) back in 2009.  However, while he was a key secondary scorer during his stint with the Caps, Johansson has certainly bounced around since then and hasn’t been able to produce with any level of consistency.

After playing with five teams over the past three seasons, Johansson inked a one-year, $1.5MM deal with Seattle back in August with the hopes that he’d be a secondary producer for them.  That hasn’t exactly happened, however, as he has just six goals in 51 games although he has chipped in with 17 assists which put him in a tie for seventh in team scoring.  He has averaged 16:35 per game this season and it’s quite unlikely he’ll play anywhere close to that in his second stint with the Capitals as he’ll be bottom-six forward depth for them.

Per CapFriendly, Washington has just over $63K in cap space so there needed to be some roster moves made to fit Johansson’s salary.  Sprong’s inclusion, coupled with Seattle using their final retention slot to retain half of Johansson’s AAV, allows the Capitals to remain cap-compliant.

Meanwhile, Sprong is an interesting addition for Seattle.  The 25-year-old has eight goals and six assists in 47 games with Washington this season and is still controllable through restricted free agency for two more years.  He’ll be arbitration-eligible for the first time this summer and is only a year removed from picking up 13 goals and 20 points in 42 games.  That would have likely pushed his arbitration value higher than what the Capitals were willing to pay which would have made him a non-tender candidate.  Now, he’ll have a chance to make a good first impression with the Kraken for the stretch run.