Via The Washington Times' Stephen Whyno, the Washington Capitals and restricted free agent defenseman Karl Alzner still have a "gap" to close in their ongoing contract negotiations.
Alzner's agent, J.P. Barry, said the same thing last week and it looks as though Alzner's value is still undecided between the two parties:
"A one-year deal is not really the situation you wanna be in without arbitration rights," Barry said.
Barry told Whyno that Alzner has not received any offer sheets from other NHL teams. July 15 is the deadline for Alzner to either accept the Caps' qualifying offer or remain a restricted free agent.
With Friday's trade of Eric Fehr to the Winnipeg Jets, Washington has just under $400,000 in remaining salary cap space. The Caps have acquired five players within the last two weeks: Troy Brouwer, Jeff Halpern, Joel Ward, Roman Hamrlik and Tomas Vokoun.
Barry did take the time to shoot down a rumor that began circulating Friday which had the Caps trading Alexander Semin and Alzner's rights to the Montreal Canadiens for Yannick Weber, Andrei Kostitsyn and s first-round pick:
"That's the hard part about the summer time - there are lots of rumors and maybe one in 10 are true," he said.