Monday afternoon, Capitals General Manager Brian MacLellan offered hints of the team’s offseason plans; suggesting Jay Beagle is a top unrestricted priority by lumping him among the pending restricted free agents; expressing the desire to give youngsters Andre Burakovsky and Tom Wilson more minutes; hoping aloud that the pending free agents might forgo larger contracts elsewhere to, in effect, keep the band together another year.
“I think it’s important for players that they realize we’ve had a successful team and if they believe we have a good chance moving forward to win a championship,” MacLellan said, “they recognize that going for max dollars, which you could make the choice to do in certain situations, that it would hinder our ability to compete going forward.