In anticipation of 2005 4th overall pick Niklas Backstrom's arrival from Sweden, the Capitals had already signed marginal Swedish defenseman (and former Capital) Josef Boumedienne to a one-year contract to interpret at the airport and through training camp. Therefore we have to try to look at the signing of Swedish center (and former Capital) Michael Nylander, to a four-year, nineteen and a half million dollar contract, as a hockey move. We said, "try."

Nylander initially came to the Caps in a salary dump at the start of the 2002-2003 season. That year saw the recent cup contender suffocate under a horrendous coach who showed up late for practices and replaced world-class defensemen with his friends from his minor league days. Friends like Josef Boumedienne.

When Nylander arrived the first time, Caps fans regarded him cautiously as a chump at the end of a mediocre career whose sole virtue was that he cost less than the combined salaries of slumping center Andrei Nikolishin and non-fighting heavyweight fighter Chris Simon, both of whom he was traded for. The biggest upside of that trade was that Chicago threw in a third-round draft pick.

In his first season with the Capitals, Nylander got a chance to play with odious prima-donna Jaromir Jagr. Nylander couldn't compete with $5 million dollar free agent center Robert Lang, who led the league in scoring for part of the next season, but before Lang's arrival Jagr and Nylander formed a mutually beneficial relationship whereby Nylander always gave Jagr the puck and Jagr didn't publicly criticize him.

Of course, Nylander didn't play too much during his second and final year in Washington, because the oft-injured defensetree Nolan Yonkman hit him in practice and broke the center's leg. While fans were delighted that Yonkman had made contact with another player and hadn't injured himself, everybody in the NHL gave up on Nylander as an old guy who got hurt too easily and would soon have to retire--everybody except the New York Rangers.

When the Capitals paid the Rangers five million dollars a year to take Jagr off their hands, the Rangers struggled to find a center the eleven million dollar winger felt comfortable with, and in 2005 they got a bargain on a used Michael Nylander. Since then Nylander has stayed alarmingly healthy and has continued to give Jagr the puck every time he can find it, racking up 113 assists in two seasons as the center on the first line and top power play unit of the team that wrote the book on expensive free agent signings.

Of course, this is not to say that he will have a hard time adjusting to playing with the Capitals. One fixture on the Rags' power play throughout his first year in New York was defenseman Tom Poti, whom the Caps grabbed yesterday on another four-year contract. That should provide a little familiarity. Skill for skill, Alexander Ovechkin is a more effective player than Jagr, and Alexander Semin isn't far behind, so Nylander can certainly continue to just give the puck to the superstars.

Nineteen and a half million dollars may seem like a lot of money for such a simple job, but it's important to find someone who can do that simple job properly. Of course, the Capitals do not expect Nylander to work so hard for all four years of this affordably-priced contract. He'll turn thirty-nine years old by the start of its fourth year, so by then the team hopes he'll teach Backstrom everything he knows, and move back to a supporting role--a five million dollar supporting role.

Interestingly enough, today the Capitals have reversed a successful half-decade policy of refusing to publish financial terms of player contracts. We are happy that will no longer have to look them up on the players union's web site, but we wonder why they didn't make the change yesterday on Poti's four-year, fourteen million dollar deal. That looks like much more of a bargain, since Poti is still under thirty, has yet to suffer a potentially-career-ending injury, has produced with and without Jagr, and has significantly better odds of playing four more years of hockey.