Washington Capitals - The Future, Part 1: Goaltending

Exploring the future in net for the Capitals

After trading Jeremy Swayman, Yaroslav Askarov, and Joey Daccord over the course of the last few months, some would think that goaltending is a weakness in Washington. However, the Capitals have done a good job of recouping our future in the net, acquiring Spencer Knight and Trey Augustine through trades, and drafting Ryerson Leenders in this year's draft.

Spencer Knight has admittedly had a rough go the last little while. That being said, as far as the NHL is concerned, he is still the future in nets for Florida, and he is still only 23 years old. Most goaltenders don't even sniff NHL ice time by that age, let alone debuting in the NHL at age 20. Knight played with the Charlotte Checkers this season, and though his play started off a bit rough, he found himself towards the end of the season and had a terrific performance through 2 games in the playoffs. We project Knight to be the future 1A of the Washington Capitals.

Trey Augustine, on the other hand, had an incredible year. Though his stats with Michigan State don't jump off the page, this wasn't Augustine's fault. Outside of leading scorer Isaac Howard and the highly touted Artyom Levshunov, Michigan State doesn't have a ton of amazing talent like some other teams have. Augustine did a lot for this team for them to get as far as they did, and it's unlikely they get as far as they did without him. That isn't all though, because Augustine also backstopped the USA U20 team. He played 4 games in this tournament where he had the highest save percentage in the entire tournament, the lowest GAA in the entire tournament, and in doing so helped them win gold. Lastly, Augustine played 4 games in net for the USA team during the World Championships. Though he had a 2-2 record, he had the lowest GAA of all the USA goalies and had a .929 save percentage. We're very excited to see Augustine's game this year, and we project him to be Washington's 1B of the future.

Lastly, we have newly drafted goaltender Ryerson Leenders of the OHL Mississauga/Brampton Steelheads. Towards the beginning of the year, he was considered a top goalie prospect and was projected to go in the 2nd-3rd round of this year's draft. However, at one point he became a little inconsistent and lost the starting job to 2025 draft elligible Jack Ivankovic. Because of this, Leenders fell to the 7th round of the NHL draft where he was drafted by the Buffalo Sabres. Though Buffalo has not seen a lot of success in the NHL, they have done a terrific job in recent years when it comes to drafting/developing goaltenders. They drafted 2023 Vezina trophy winner, Linus Ullmark. They drafted current starter Ukko Pekka-Lukkonen, who has done very well for them. They traded for Devon Levi, who they have done a very good job developing. They drafted Eric Portillo, Cal Petersen, Jonas Johansen, all of whom have since been traded but are solid goaltenders regardless. Suffice it to say, we trust the NHL Sabres to do right by Leenders and we aren't too worried about inconsistency when it comes to goaltenders. You'd be hard-pressed to find a goalie who hasn't been inconsistent at times. Leenders, while not huge, is incredibly acrobatic and has terrific reflexes, and despite the inconsistent play, he still finished with the 2nd highest save percentage in the OHL behind only his own teammate and has played very well at every level he has competed at. Though he is the 3rd best goalie in our current system, we still think Leenders has a ton of potential and we're very excited to see his development continue in Brampton this year.

Next, we will cover the Capitals' defense. Thanks for reading!