The Washington Capitals have extended qualifying offers to all nine of their Restricted Free Agents prior to this afternoon’s 5:00 deadline. Per the team’s site:
The list of players qualified is as follows: Jay Beagle, Chris Bourque, Eric Fehr, Tomas Fleischmann, Andrew Gordon, Boyd Gordon, Patrick McNeill, Zach Miskovic and Jeff Schultz. The first six players listed are forwards while the latter three are defensemen.
Washington qualified all nine of its restricted free agent players, and those players now have until July 15 to decide whether or not to accept the team’s offer.
Eight of the nine players – with McNeill being the lone exception – carry arbitration rights. Those eight players have until July 5 to file for arbitration. The NHL’s salary arbitration hearings will be conducted from July 20-Aug. 4 in Toronto.
Of note, any of Fehr, Fleischmann and Schultz could potentially do very well for himself in arbitration, so it will be very interesting to see how the team handles contract negotiations in the weeks ahead.