DONE DEAL: Capitals have completed the deal of a draft pick.

DONE DEAL: Capitals have completed the deal of a draft pick.

The Washington Capitals will lose exclusive rights to two of their draft picks if they don’t sign them to entry-level contracts by 5 pm on Saturday. June 1 is the “must sign by” date each offseason.

Neither 2022 fifth-round pick Jake Karabela nor 2020 seventh-round pick Oskar Magnusson have been inked by the Capitals. They will be free to sign wherever they choose if Washington doesn’t get their pens to paper.

Cap Friendly shared the league’s list of potential soon-to-be free agents on Thursday morning.

Karabela played his third season in the OHL with the Guelph Storm last year and his second since being selected by the Capitals. The Guelph native set new career highs in goals (25) and points (55) in 65 games. Karabela will be eligible to return to Guelph as an overager next year as he turned 20 last March.

Washington extended a bonafide offer to Karabela a year ago which saw them retain his NHL rights for this past season. According to the NHL’s collective bargaining agreement, a bona fide offer is a standard player contract that starts at the beginning of the next league season and offers at least league minimum salary. Its primary purpose is to extend the team’s claim to the player’s rights.

Jake Karabela

Magnusson spent the majority of the past three years playing in the HockeyAllsvenskan in Sweden, the country’s second-tier league behind the SHL. In 41 games for AIK last year, he recorded nine points (2g, 7a). Since being drafted by Washington in 2020, he has seen 12 SHL games for the Malmo Redhawks but has yet to record a point at Sweden’s highest level.

The 22-year-old Swede won a bronze medal with Team Sweden at the 2022 World Junior Championship. Magnusson and Bogdan Trineyev were the lone forward representatives of the Capitals’ 2020 draft class at the club’s last Development Camp.

The Capitals renounced their rights to defensemen Martin Has and Dru Krebs by not signing them before the deadline last year.

Washington has also taken advantage of other teams letting their rights to players expire a couple of times in recent years. Henrik Rybinski and Hardy Häman Aktell were draft picks who never signed entry-level deals with the teams that drafted them, allowing the Capitals to add them to their organization. Now they’re both playing big roles for the Hershey Bears in this year’s AHL playoffs.

 

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