Washington Capitals place Nicklas Backstrom on LTIR

The Washington Capitals have placed veteran forward Nicklas Backstrom on LTIR. The Swedish-native announced that he is stepping away from the game a week ago after dealing with numerous injuries over the past few seasons. He played eight games this year, scoring one point, but it was ultimately a false-start to the season for him.

The Capitals have made the smart move with Backstrom’s playing career over. He has two years remaining on his contract, costing the team $9.2 million against the cap. With this move to place him on LTIR, the Capitals can now exceed the cap by $9.2 million if they decide to add any players down the road.

As of now, the Capitals have roughly $8.5 million in cap space due to the fact that Backstrom, Joel Edmundson, and Max Pacioretty are all on LTIR. The team has had a poor start to the season and is at a crossroads for what their future will look like. They are one of the oldest teams in the NHL and the only thing keeping them from going full rebuild mode is the fact that Alex Ovechkin is still in the league.

In a corresponding move by the team, Michael Sgarbossa has been called up from the Hershey Bears in the AHL. Sgarbossa has been a full-time AHLer for the last decade and occasionally gets called up to play in the NHL when there are injuries. He hasn’t played an NHL game yet this year but scored 12 points in 11 games with the Bears. Since 2015-16, he has been one of the best players in the AHL year-in, year-out.

In 2022-23, Sgarbossa finished the season with 21 goals and 58 points in 60 games and scored three points in four playoff games. In his career, he has played 65 NHL games, scoring four goals and 16 points.