The Washington Capitals are heading toward the 2026-27 season with three contracts that stand out for all the wrong reasons: two big free-agent additions and the extension Pierre-Luc Dubois signed back in 2023.
Alex Tuch, Boone Jenner and Dubois are all paid like core pieces, and in Washington, that comes with pressure. Tuch and Jenner arrived via free agency, where teams routinely pay a premium to land help on the open market. Dubois is already on the books at a hefty number, and the Capitals will need him to keep producing to make the deal work.
Tuch tops the list after Washington completed a sign-and-trade with the Buffalo Sabres this summer and handed him an 8-year, $84 million contract. That works out to a $10.5 million average annual value, which Spotrac says ranks 23rd in the NHL.
The 18th overall pick in the 2014 NHL Draft brings plenty of production with him: three 30-goal seasons in the last four years, including 33 goals in his final year with Buffalo. Over 615 games, he has scored 200 goals and posted 448 points, good for 0.32 goals per game and 0.72 points per game across a 10-year pro career.
The fit is the next question. Tuch now has to settle into a new locker room and learn Spencer Carbery’s system, all while carrying the kind of expectations that come with a deal this large.
His size and skill should fit Washington’s style, but the pressure will be intense in what could be Alex Ovechkin’s final NHL season. The contract may look more reasonable as the market keeps climbing, but the price is still steep considering the Capitals already have similar forwards in Tom Wilson and Aleksei Protas.
Jenner comes in next at four years and $23 million, with a $5.75 million AAV. The 33-year-old spent a decade wearing a letter for the Columbus Blue Jackets and served as captain for the last five seasons.
Drafted in the second round in 2011, he has 212 goals and 421 points in 808 career games, averaging 0.52 points per game over 13 seasons in Columbus. He finished his final season there with 13 goals and 38 points before heading east when free agency opened on July 1.
His cap hit lands in familiar territory for Washington. Jenner’s $5.75 million AAV matches Matt Roy’s six-year, $34 million free-agent deal from the 2024 offseason and sits just behind Logan Thompson at $5.8 million, Martin Fehervary at $6 million and Tom Wilson at $6.5 million. The question is whether Jenner can get enough ice time to push toward the score sheet and make the contract look right, especially after falling short of the 40-point mark since the 2022-23 season.
Dubois remains the most established of the three deals, but also the one with the most scrutiny attached after his uneven path to Washington. He first signed an 8-year, $68 million extension with an $8.5 million AAV after being traded to the LA Kings from the Winnipeg Jets during the 2023 offseason. That stint went badly, as he produced 16 goals and 40 points in his first season with Los Angeles before being dealt to the Capitals in the 2024 offseason.
Washington got a much better version of him in year one, when the third overall pick in the 2016 NHL Entry Draft put up 66 points. Last season was a different story.
Injury trouble limited him to 19 points in 29 games, and now he may be asked to take on more center responsibilities under Carbery with so much high-priced wing talent around him. That could help him in one sense, but it could also cut into his point totals after he looked promising in that role last season.
Dubois’ $8.5 million AAV is the third-highest number on Washington’s cap sheet behind Tuch and Jakob Chychrun at $9 million. It also sits just above Jordan Kyrou’s $8.12 million deal with the St.
Louis Blues, signed in September 2022. The expectations are obvious: Dubois has to earn that money over the rest of the decade.
None of these contracts is crippling, but Washington could still run into cap trouble once the Ovechkin era ends. For now, the Capitals are pushing ahead with a playoff-or-bust mindset and less than $100,000 in cap space under the $103.9 million limit for the season.
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