MacLellan, Caps Adjusting to Shifting Timeline

Under normal circumstances, this would be a busy time for Caps general manager Brian MacLellan and his peers around the National Hockey League.

The league's draft combine is held in Buffalo in late May every year. Teams' decisions on whether to offer contracts to unsigned junior players drafted in 2018 are typically due by June 1 on the NHL's calendar of important dates. Player contracts for both restricted and unrestricted free agents expire on June 30, and critical dates for the tendering of qualifying offers, arbitration and club-elected arbitration follow shortly afterwards.

The league's annual draft was slated to be held in Montreal late next month, but it has been postponed. And more broadly, the beginning of what has become - since the advent of a salary cap in 2005-06 - roster-building season in the NHL is roughly two weeks away. The league's free agency market typically opens for business on July 1, and between that annual shopping season, the draft, the revelation of the salary cap figure for the next season, and a slew of offseason trades that typically take place between the beginning of June and the end of August, teams' rosters for the upcoming season begin to take shape.

Teams are typically constructed between mid-June and mid-July every year; of the 23 players on Washington's roster at the time of the pause, 18 of them joined the Capitals' organization via draft, trade or free agency between June 14 and July 2 of a given year. Each of the other five were acquired in-season, ahead of or at recent NHL trade deadlines.

But these are far from normal circumstances. Things are busy for MacLellan and company, but for different reasons and in different ways. Rather than tackling his offseason to-do list, MacLellan doesn't know when he will be able to get to that, or even when he will learn the league's salary cap figure for the 2020-21 season.

Instead, he's focused on when his team will be able to start a short training camp ahead of the league's "return to play," and a series of round-robin games with Boston, Tampa Bay and Philadelphia. The Caps will play those three games to determine the seeding of those four teams - and their top four Western Conference counterparts - while the other 16 teams battle it out in best-of-five qualifying round series. But they don't know when the 24 returning teams will play those games.

After that, the Stanley Cup playoffs will begin with the remaining 16 teams, with the Caps already guaranteed one of those 16 berths. What we don't know yet are any dates for any of these events, nor do we know whether all playoff series will be best-of-seven affairs, as they have been for decades. We also don't know whether the first-round Stanley Cup Playoff match-ups will be determined by seeding or by a bracket.

With so much uncertainty, MacLellan and his hockey operations staff now proceed into this newly developed landscape, all while knowing that their plate will continue to be piled with those other items that would normally be drawing their full attention in June and July.

"We try and prepare as best as we can," says MacLellan in a Friday Zoom conference with media. "The dates that we look to start to finish, constantly evolve and constantly change. We got a firm - or somewhat firm - date of July 10 (for the start of training camp) the other day. But that's not firm either; it could be later than that, could be July 14.

"I think we just move forward and try and prepare as much as we can, discuss issues that might possibly come up. Our preparation for the draft is done. If they wanted to have a draft, we could have a draft right now. We'll use the excess time - I prefer the draft to be in logical order - but we had to prepare for it and just in case it happened earlier than we anticipate.

"The critical dates for contracts or visas and all that stuff is being worked out with the league; they keep extending those. So we just deal with what comes up individually, and try to make decisions as we go. With the contract issues and the draft issues, I think everything will be just continually extended until it works out."

Phase One of the league's plan - the self-isolation and social distancing phase - is nearing its end. Within the next two weeks, Phase Two is expected to get underway. That would permit players to return to their market cities and to participate in on-ice and off-ice training on a voluntary basis. Phase 3 is training camp and Phase 4 would involve the actual dropping of the puck sometime in midsummer, with the intent of awarding the Stanley Cup in early fall.

But there are hurdles to be cleared between now and then, and dates and formats must be firmed up as well. We are still very early in this process.

"This phase [two] I think is up to the player," says MacLellan. "We're making our facility available. European players, if you know they have some other workout area they want to go to they can go to that. Players living in other cities are allowed to go to rinks in their cities. It's not a decision from team management. We're trying to make our [facility] available health wise, get the ice in, have some protocols in place with the directions from the league and from the medical experts on how we can make our facility available.

"It's not a mandatory thing. We just want to prepare for guys; if they choose to come in, then they can come in, and that's happening around all the cities where guys live, and each guy approaches it different. Guys will have to quarantine coming back - for two weeks -- and then they will be able to practice. So they have to time it themselves on how they see that, how it works out for them to be best prepared for training camp."

While he may not be engaging in his typical June-July exercise of roster-building, MacLellan notes that he and his hockey ops staff and the coaching staff are using this time to consider their roster for the impending postseason. Teams will be permitted to carry as many as 28 skaters and an unlimited number of goaltenders, and the braintrust is contemplating which Hershey Bears might be a good fit for Washington's "black aces."

Connor McMichael, the team's 19-year-old first-round draft choice from 2019, played last season with the London Knights of the OHL, where he finished third in the league in goals, points and shots on net. McMichael is also under consideration for a berth with the team's black aces.

"I think it'd be a great learning experience for Connor," says MacLellan. "He seems to be a guy that can pick up things from good players, from watching them and being around them. The feedback from him from last training camp was that he was engaged. He learned a lot from Nick [Backstrom]; he learned a lot from our veteran players. I think he would take a big leap in his development just from being in that environment - to see how guys work, see how guys practice, off-ice workouts, nutrition stuff. To see our main guys doing it on a daily basis in a competitive environment I think would be invaluable for him."