Capitals forward Jeff Halpern will not return to the team next season. The District native was informed of that decision in a phone call with general manager George McPhee last week. He is an unrestricted free agent on July 1 and can sign with any NHL club.
Halpern finishes his second stint with the Caps. He made the team as an undrafted free agent signed out of Princeton University in 1999 and played here until after the 2005-06 season – serving as team captain that final year – before he signed with the Dallas Stars. He later made stops in Tampa Bay, Los Angeles and Montreal.
“I was thrilled to sign here again. I loved playing here,” Halpern said. “Not just to have people who are close to me get the chance to come to practices and come to games. But I took a lot of pride, as a fan even, I just loved to watch the last four or five years how much the city has embraced the team. It was a special thing to be a part of that.”
Halpern finished with four goals and 12 assists in 69 games this past season for Washington. But he was a healthy scratch for the last seven regular-season games and the first 12 games of the Stanley Cup playoffs.
“After a while your head starts playing games with you,” Halpern said.
It was only when center Jay Beagle went down with a leg injury in Game 5 of the second-round series against the New York Rangers that Halpern got back into the lineup. He admitted that keeping up with his fellow fourth liners in Game 6 was a struggle, but that he played better in Game 7. Unfortunately for him, the season ended right there with a 2-1 loss.
“With that it becomes even more disappointing that I never really got a chance to play in the playoffs,” Halpern said. “Because you think right away that I want to come back and win a championship for this club. And the fact that we came up short and that I didn’t really get a chance to do that, it’s a disappointing end to it. But I was thrilled to be here.”
The uncertainty of the NHL’s labor situation weighs on Halpern’s mind. The top free agents will be signed on July 1 even without an exact idea of the salary cap for 2012-13. For everybody else? They may have to wait deep into the summer, if not longer, as the owners and the NHL Players’ Association hammer out a new collective bargaining agreement. The old one expires on Sept. 15. In some ways it’s similar to the summer when Halpern signed with Montreal in 2010. That didn’t happen until Sept. 7 – just in time for training camp.
But Halpern says nothing will change in his routine. He’s already back skating after some time off and will remain in the area working with his Loudoun County-based skating instructor, Wendy Marco, and her associates. In years past he shied away from skating at Washington’s headquarters, Kettler Iceplex in Arlington, Va., just because he didn’t play for the Caps, but says that’s not an issue anymore. Hockey may take him away over the next few years, but he maintains a suburban Maryland home with his young family.
Halpern’s agent, former Caps goalie Mike Liut, will have some ammunition as he tries to sell his client to clubs around the league. Halpern ranked fifth in the entire NHL in faceoff winning percentage (58.3 percent). That won’t go unnoticed. And while Washington is moving in another direction, Halpern ended his call with McPhee confident that he still has a place in the league. It just won’t be with his hometown team.
“Even talking with George I was pretty relieved just to hear his positive feedback on me,” Halpern said. “I think the biggest surprise of not playing at the end of the year was because I thought I had done a real good job in the role that was expected of me all year. For playing fourth-line minutes pretty much most of the year – even though I would have liked to have had more goals – 16 points for a fourth-line guy, I was happy. I just felt good on the ice.”
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