On July 1, 2018 – less than a month after the Caps won the Stanley Cup – Nic Dowd signed a one-year deal for just $650,000 to come to Washington and vie for the fourth line center role vacated by fan favorite Jay Beagle, who spent a decade in the Caps’ organization before departing with a four-year free agency deal with Vancouver.
Today in Pittsburgh, the Caps announced they have signed the 34-year-old Huntsville, Ala. native to a two-year, $6 million contract extension. It’s the fourth contract Dowd has signed with Washington, including that first one-year deal from seven summers back.
“It took much longer than I thought it would, I guess,” says Dowd of getting his current deal done. “That’s how it goes. And this was my first time I guess that I’ve dealt with lengthy negotiations; my last two deals came and happened within 24 to 48 hours, so I guess I just had no experience with how long these things could take.
“But it was always amicable and trending in the right direction. I’m just really, really happy for [my wife] Paige and my kids. We love it here, and it’s been amazing for our family and our lives.”
Dowd wasn’t just handed the fourth line center’s gig in the fall of 2018; he had to beat out another right-handed center – Jayson Megna – whom the Caps brought in to compete for that role. Now 35, Megna is still playing pro hockey and he has even appeared in the NHL this season with Boston. But Megna never played in Washington – he spent that 2018-19 season with AHL Hershey – and Boston is the seventh different organization for which he has toiled.
While Dowd has played 450 games with Washington – only 21 fewer than Beagle did in his tenure in the District – over the last seven seasons, Megna has played 91 games in the circuit over the same span.
“It's impressive, what he's done in his career,” says Caps coach Spencer Carbery. “And if you look back at the one-year deal and coming here, the thing that I take from Nic Dowd – which I will share with young players for years to come – is he is someone that people forget was a Hobey Baker finalist, so he produced at an extremely high clip in college hockey. So he's coming into pro hockey, goes to [AHL] Manchester, and he’s one of the most prolific scoring forwards in the nation in college.
“And he finds his way in pro hockey, and identifies a way of how he can stay in the National Hockey League, play a ton of games and earn a living, and play a vital role on a team being able to compete at the highest level and win games. And that is so hard for some players for that to click. And it clicked early on for Nic Dowd of realizing, ‘Okay, if I do this at an absolute elite level, and this is what I care the most about doing, and I thrive in my role, I can play in this League a long, long time.’ And that's impressive to see, because, as I said, it is challenging, and there's some players that never figure that out and never end up playing in the NHL, because they weren't able to realize if I can do one thing, if I can grab onto this role.”
Upon arrival in Washington, Dowd had career bests of six goals, 16 assists and 22 points, all established in the same season of 2016-17 with Los Angeles. His ice time dipped the following season, and he managed just three goals and four points in 56 games.
His first season in Washington was good enough to get him a three-year extension for a modest increase of $100k annually, and he was a serviceable bottom six player for his first two seasons with the Caps, but he was still logging less nightly ice time than he had in that ’16-17 season in LA.
When Peter Laviolette took over behind the Washington bench in 2020-21, he identified Dowd as a guy who could be deployed as a frequent penalty killer and who could also be depended upon to handle the responsibilities of going up against and shutting down the opposition’s top offensive lines.
Playing with Garnet Hathaway and Carl Hagelin, Dowd relished and embraced his new role, and he hasn’t looked back since. His average ice time leaped from 10:50 a night to 14:22, and he put up double-digit goal totals for the first of what are now five straight seasons with at least 10 goals.
Annually among the NHL centers with the most defensive zone starts, Dowd and his linemates – mostly Brandon Duhaime and Taylor Raddysh this season – are driven, physical, relentless, and extremely difficult to play against.
“There’s players all around the league – highly talented players – where you just don’t know what you’re going to get out of them on a nightly basis,” says Dowd. “Those type of guys usually need to season a little bit, but some of them unfortunately fall out of the League because they can’t figure it out, and some of them do figure it out and maybe change parts of their game.
“The ironic thing is that all the things I’m trying to stay consistent at – taking face-offs, killing penalties, being a positive player [plus/minus wise], getting pucks into the [offensive] zone and forechecking – all of that only turns into more offense. That’s all it does. So my best offensive games will probably be my best defensive games. Because if I win all my face-offs, we have the puck all the time. We get the puck, we dump it in, we get to forecheck. It’s tough when the other team has the puck the whole damn time. It’s challenging to break out.”
Since Carbery took over last season, Dowd’s ice time his jumped yet again; he has averaged more than 15 minutes a night, and he typically sees an increase in the third period in games in which Washington leads, because his line is leaned on to help close out close contests. Carbery even gives Dowd a nod for helping Caps captain Alex Ovechkin surpass Wayne Gretzky’s all-time NHL goals record earlier this month.
“It’s seven years which he's been a huge part of this organization, team, leadership group,” says Carbery of Dowd. “He's done so many things on and off the ice, and I focus specifically on what he does on the ice. There's a lot of things that go unnoticed and that don't show up in the box score or the stat sheet that Nic Dowd does.
“And I think the best compliment I could give him is I equate it with Ovi's record, because sometimes you look at Nick Backstrom and Dylan Strome, and they get a lot of attention for helping [Ovechkin] get to the record with assists and all this. And so how does Nic Dowd play into that? Well, I'll tell you how Nic Dowd plays into that. This guy is someone that eats the most difficult minutes in the league, starts in the defensive zone constantly, so that [Ovechkin] can start in the offensive zone.”
Over the last decade or so, we have written a fair amount about the Capitals signing players as free agents or acquiring players in trades and then getting those players to ink subsequent contract extensions to stay in Washington.
Dowd likely qualifies as the poster player for such players coming to the District and thriving; today’s is the fourth deal he has signed with Washington. By the end of today’s deal, Dowd will have spent nine seasons with Washington.
“To play in the NHL for that long, it’s something to say the least – that’s a privilege in itself – but to be with the same organization, surrounded by some of the best players in the world is another thing,” says Dowd. “And to be a fly on the wall for some of the things that have happened within this organization with Ovi, Johnny [Carlson], [Tom Wilson], [TJ Oshie], [Nicklas Backstrom], I mean, the list goes on. And like I said, it’s a privilege.”
Dowd and his family have also immersed themselves into the local community in their time here. Days ago in DC, he was named the 2024-25 recipient of the annual Caps Care Community Award. In 2018, he and wife Paige started Dowd’s Crowd, to provide children with sensory issues with the ability to attend and enjoy Caps games.
“I would really like to say that I’m a big believer that if you surround yourself with people that want to be successful, you’re going to have success,” he says. “And if you're a good person, and you work hard and you do the right things, good things are going to come to you. But this organization is chock full of good people, and I think that's what separates us from the rest of the league, and that's why guys want to stay here when they get here.”
