Within the past few weeks, when it became increasingly clear that Justin Williams wasn’t going to be able to return to the Los Angeles Kings after seven seasons, Williams’ 6-year-old son, Jaxon, chimed in with his own recommendation for the future.
He had been watching the NHL’s annual awards show on television, and when Washington Capitals left wing Alex Ovechkin was introduced as a finalist for the Hart Trophy and the Ted Lindsay Award, Jaxon turned to his father.
“He said, ’Daddy, if we don’t go back to L.A., I think you should go to play with Ovechkin, because he’s the best,’” Williams recalled. “You watch the awards and you see how kids think. It’s pretty sweet. I just hope he has one of my jerseys on instead of Ovi’s at games.”
That awkward situation could present itself this fall. Williams signed a two-year, $6.5 million contract with the Capitals late Wednesday night, giving the team the top-line right wing it has been desperately seeking while potentially providing Williams, a three-time Stanley Cup champion, an opportunity to hoist the trophy aloft one more time.
Williams, 33, will certainly serve a top-six role with the Capitals, coach Barry Trotz and general manager Brian MacLellan each said on Thursday. Trotz has a little more than three months to figure out how to configure his lines, though he noted that Williams “needs to be in the top six.” MacLellan said ideally, he’d like to see Williams play on the same line as youngsters Andre Burakovsky and Evgeni Kuznetsov.
“He’s a very, very cerebral, smart player,” Trotz said. “He knows where to go. Anticipates. He makes quick plays off of people’s mistakes, and he’s very productive and he’s a winner. That’s exactly — his name became part of what we were talking about, and we were pretty excited when he decided to come here.”
Williams said he weighed multiple offers on Thursday, the first day of the league’s free-agent signing period, but declined to share specifics, citing respect for those teams. Trotz said he knew the Capitals were among a handful of teams that had offered Williams a contract, and MacLellan, who originally believed the Capitals would need to find an answer via trade, said that with the way the market unfolded over the opening hours, Williams “became more affordable to us.”
It wasn’t until after 11 p.m. that Williams had agreed to the terms of a contract with the Capitals, who were handcuffed by how much money they could pay the winger. Signing Kuznetsov, goaltender Braden Holtby and left wing Marcus Johansson, all of whom remain restricted free agents, has been the priority, leaving the Capitals with a meager amount of money to spend on other players.
It also forced MacLellan to make a decision: Offer Williams a contract, potentially removing flexibility from those three players’ pending deals, or miss out on signing Williams entirely.
“We’re continually talking about what could we afford and where the RFAs are going to come in at,” MacLellan said. “I mean, ideally, you would like to have the RFAs all signed going into unrestricted free agency, and I thought we put aggressive offers on the table for our guys. Unfortunately, it hasn’t worked out to where we got them signed, and we knew exactly the dollar amount we’re dealing with, but we’ve kind of estimated and budgeted for where we think they’ll come in and we made our decisions based on that.”
By virtue of trades and contract extensions, Williams had never experienced unrestricted free agency before. He was originally drafted by the Philadelphia Flyers in 2000, Williams was traded midway through the 2003-04 season to the Carolina Hurricanes, with whom he won the Stanley Cup in 2006. He was then traded to the Kings during the 2008-09 season, winning championships in 2012 and 2014.
He won the Conn Smyth Trophy in 2014, when he had three goals and six assists in the Kings’ six-game victory over the New York Rangers, and has gained the nickname “Mr. Game 7” for his postseason heroics. Undefeated in the seven Game 7s he’s played in his career, Williams has tallied 14 points, a league record.
His signing seems, in theory, like the perfect fit for the Capitals, who have struggled to close out playoff series over the past decade — including this spring, when they held a 3-1 lead on the Rangers in the Eastern Conference semifinals but managed to lose the final three games.
“My Game 7 record is a product of the teams that I’ve played on,” Williams said. “This is a great team, as well, that I’m coming to. I hope to help us get to that next level.”
• Zac Boyer can be reached at zboyer@washingtontimes.com.
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