NHL Washington Dc

Canada's TSN is reporting that unrestricted free agent center Sergei Fedorov has signed a one-year, $4 million deal to return to the Washington Capitals. The news comes a little less than 24 hours after FanHouse had passed on a report from Russia's Sovetsky Sport that KHL President Alexander Medvedev had announced that Fedorov had passed on an opportunity to play for KHL club SKA St. Petersburg, as well as multiple denials from the Capitals that any deal with Fedorov was imminent.

In other Caps news, the team announced that it had reached an agreement with restricted free agent forward Brooks Laich on a three-year deal. As is the case with all of the team's contracts, financial terms were not disclosed, though the Washington Post is reporting the deal is for $6.2 million over the length of the contract. Laich, 25, is coming off the best season of his career after scoring 21 goals and 37 points in 82 games. Laich, as many will recall, was originally acquired from the Ottawa Senators near the end of the 2003-04 NHL season in the deal that shipped Peter Bondra out of town.

Once again, our friend Dmitry Chesnokov from Sovetsky Sport passed along a piece of news that ought to interest North American hockey fans.

According to KHL President Alexander Medvedev, center Sergei Fedorov is set to re-sign with the Washington Capitals. Here's the report from Sovetsky's Pavel Lysenkov, who was at a press event in Moscow earlier today where Medvedev was unveiling the new logo for the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL):

"It is sad that we will not see Sergei Fedorov in the KHL. Most likely, today he will sign a new contract with Washington."

Medvedev, according to Lysenkov, is on the board of SKA St. Petersburg hockey club, which was involved in negotiations with Fedorov.

I just got off the phone with Nate Ewell of the Caps PR office, and he said that while negotiations were ongoing and the team was hopeful something would get done, no announcement was imminent.

If the report is true, it can't be anything but good news for the Caps.

After he was acquired from Columbus at the trade deadline for a draft pick Ted Ruth, Fedorov didn't exactly make an immediate impact with the team on the scoresheet. Instead, it was abundantly clear that his veteran presence did have an incredible effect inside the locker room, especially on wingers Alex Ovechkin and Alexander Semin.

When it came to play on the ice, Fedorov more or less transformed the team's penalty kill, which had been something of a question mark for long stretches during the regular season. Better yet, working with Ovechkin and Semin, Fedorov helped form the top scoring line at the recently completed World Championships where Russia took the Gold Medal.

TSN is reporting that Jose Theodore is now a member of the Washington Capitals. It's a two-year contract for $9 million.

Going into the offseason, the Washington Capitals were facing several challenges. Challenge #1 was re-signing defenseman Mike Green. That mission was accomplished earlier today when he came to terms with the team on a four-year contract. Challenge #2 was getting Cristobal Huet, who was acquired from Montreal at the trade deadline for a second round draft pick in 2009, re-signed. It was Huet, as most folks will recall, whose incredible play down the stretch enabled him to displace long-time franchise stalwart Olie Kolzig (now off to Tampa Bay) and helped the team qualify for the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the first time in five seasons.

Last Friday Huet's agent, Stephen Bartlett, told me that while his client was comfortable with the term of the contract the Capitals had put on the table, the money was a sticking point. Yesterday, Bartlett told Corey Masisack of The Washington Times that Huet was prepared to wait until today to see what the market had to offer. For more details, check out Capitals Insider, where word is already out that Huet is off to Chicago for four years at $5.6 million per season.

TSN is reporting that the Washington Capitals and restricted free agent defenseman Mike Green have come to an agreement on a four-year contract that will pay him an average of $5.25 million per season. The signing has to be seen as a major relief for the franchise, as Green is just the sort of young impact player who may have well attracted an offer sheet from another franchise, this despite the fact that Washington General Manager George McPhee had made it clear from the outset that he would match any offer sheet Green might have received.

With Green signed, the team's immediate concern has to be signing unrestricted free agent goaltender Cristobal Huet. The latest word on those negotiations came from Corey Masisack of The Washington Times, who spoke with Huet's agent Stephen Bartlett. According to Bartlett, he and the Capitals hadn't been in contact for some time, as he had indicated to the team that he and Huet were committed to waiting until today to see what the market has to say about Huet's value. I talked briefly with Bartlett myself last Friday, and he said to me that while the team and Huet were in sync on the length of the contract, the holdup was, as it always is, the dollar amount.

Stay tuned.

UPDATE: I was assisting Dr. Mirtle in surgery when the Caps held a conference call, but Puck Daddy was there.

It's hard to add anything more than what Dan Steinberg has already said about this video clip featuring Alex Ovechkin, Ilya Kovalchuk and Alexei Morozov presenting some sort of Russian pop music award to former Bee Gee Robin Gibb. I guess all I'll say at this point is it's good to see Ovechkin and his buddies enjoying the offseason.

Last week was a pretty good one for the Washington Capitals. Alex Ovechkin walked away with both the Hart and Pearson Trophies at the NHL Awards, while head coach Bruce Boudreau snagged the Jack Adams Award for coach of the year. Then, just one day later, everyone came back to Washington for a full day of celebrating the best season the team enjoyed in many years.

Now the hard work starts. As my FanHouse colleague J.P. noted yesterday, there are plenty of players to get under contract, not the least of which is defenseman Mike Green. But while Green is a restricted free agent, the team has made it abundantly clear that any offer sheet the player gets will be matched without delay.

But above and beyond Green, a target of equal opportunity has to be goalie Cristobal Huet. Without a doubt, it was the acquisition of Huet at the trade deadline for just a second round draft pick that helped supercharge the team down the stretch and drive them to their first playoff appearance in five years. Outside of fellow unrestricted free agent Jose Theodore, Huet would have to be considered the top goalie available in this year's free agent class.

With all that in mind, I picked up the phone and called Huet's agent, Stephen Bartlett at his office in Pittsford, New York. And much to my surprise, he answered.

John Dellapina of the New York Daily News reports that Rangers General Manager Glen Sather hasn't been in contact with Jaromir Jagr about a contract extension, raising the possibility that the Czech winger might opt to sign with Omsk-Avangard of the KHL instead.

Fair enough, but what really caught my eye was this passage, which has to be read to be believed:

Not only can Jagr sign with Omsk-Avangard at any time, there seems to be little to be gained by making him sit and wonder whether the Rangers want him back. His personal experience (see: Washington 2000-2004) is that things don't go well when he's playing for a team that doesn't fully believe in him.

Excuse me? Granted, by the end of the 2003-04 NHL season, the Caps, who at that point were desperate to find any team at all to pawn Jagr off on, had ceased believing in him. But before then, the Caps did anything and everything in their power to make sure he was comfortable both on and off the ice in Washington.

That would include importing players like Michael Nylander and Robert Lang who were thought to be a better fit with Jagr's style of play. Recall, of course, that the team signed these players to large contracts, which meant the salary budget simply wasn't available to buttress other needs, namely an aging blue line.

Of course, the biggest reason the salary budget was strained, and continued to be strained even after Jagr was shipped out of town, was the huge 7-year, $77 million contract the team signed him to before he ever stepped on the ice in a Capitals uniform. One would think that a financial commitment of that size and scope would have led Jagr to conclude that the Caps believed in him.

The horrible truth: The Caps did believe in Jagr. Until of course, they learned the hard way that they couldn't believe in him anymore. Here endeth the lesson.

There was one last North American stop for Alex Ovechkin once he picked up the Hart and Pearson trophies at the NHL Awards on Friday night, and that was a quick trip back to Washington, D.C. to let the city and its hockey fans celebrate his incredible season.

The fun started when Washington Mayor Adrian Fenty awarded Ovechkin the key to the city on the steps of the Wilson Building, a moment when Ovechkin, clearly delighted, declared the city speed limit null and void for the rest of the day. Though the 500 fans in attendance were grateful, there's no word yet as to whether or not the Metropolitan Police Department complied.

With the public ceremony out of the way, Ovechkin and company decamped for victory celebration at Teatro Goldoni, one of the city's swankiest eateries. Our FanHouse colleague J.P. was on hand, as well as our old buddy, G-Dub. By dint of their coverage, it was an event that was not to be missed -- though this blogger did thanks to other commitments.

If you're wondering who the young lady on Ovechkin's arm is in the picture here from the red carpet at Friday's NHL Awards, wonder no more -- it's Elena Alyonka Larionov, daughter of future HHOF inductee Igor Larionov.

Indeed, it's good to be Ovechkin. And in Washington, next season can't come fast enough.

I think most of the hockey world had already anticipated that after leading the NHL this year in both goals and points, that Alex Ovechkin of the Washington Capitals was the presumptive winner of the Hart Tropy as the league's Most Valuable Player. And I write that with all due respect to fellow nominees Evgeni Malkin and Jarome Iginla.

But that doesn't mean that folks don't like to be kept in suspense. Unless of course, you work for NHL.com. Over the past few weeks they've been accidentally putting merchandise on sale before things more or less get official when it comes to actually winning stuff.

First it was declaring the Penguins Eastern Conference Champs a couple of days before they actually eliminated the Philadelphia Flyers. Then it was seeing 2008 Stanley Cup Champs gear in Red Wings colors only a couple of hours before Pittsburgh's riveting victory in Game Five of the Stanley Cup Finals. As my friend Sean Leahy has written before, the hockey gods normally frown on such blasphemy.

Which of course means they've gone and done it again. The NHL Awards Show isn't until June 12, but as far as Shop.NHL.com is concerned, you might as well already load up on your Alexander Ovechkin 2008 Hart Trophy T-Shirts. Click here to buy. I'm told by reliable sources that they're already accepting orders.

One last thing: Congratulations Alex! Be sure to act surprised next week in Toronto. As for Malkin and Iginla, I think they could be forgiven if they skipped the show knowing that they're not going to win.

Major stick tap: Japers' Rink.

UPDATE: The NHL has issued an official statement that Puck Daddy got hold of:

In an effort to offer our fans the merchandise they want in a timely manner following an event such as the NHL Awards, our licensees prepare product for all possible outcomes. In this situation, the link for one of the possible products became live early through an error by our e-commerce provider. We regret the error and have since taken steps to amend.

Hmmm. We'll see now, won't we?