Kings send Gilbert to Washington, acquire conditional fifth round pick

Good morning, Insiders. The Kings made a small trade on Wednesday morning, sending veteran defenseman Tom Gilbert, who had played five games in Ontario, registering one assist, to the Washington Capitals in exchange for a conditional fifth round draft pick. Via Stephen Whyno, there is a high bar for the conditions to be met.

Gilbert, who put up one goal and five points in 18 games with Los Angeles, was waived on February 1 and assigned to Ontario one day later. He will report to Hershey, Washington’s AHL affiliate.

Signed to a one-year, $1.4-million contract on July 1 while the Kings dealt with questions surrounding Matt Greene’s ability to return from injury and the readiness of some young defensive depth, Gilbert was also brought on to provide a veteran right-handed shot from the blue line. He had played only one of the team’s final 17 games prior to getting waived on February 1.

Via Pierre LeBrun of ESPN.com, the Kings retain 20% of Gilbert’s salary and cap hit, which comes out to a retention of $280,000, according to figures provided by Cap Friendly.

Rules for Blog Commenting

  • No profanity, slurs or other offensive language. Replacing letters with symbols does not turn expletives into non-expletives.
  • Personal attacks against other blog commenters, and/or blatant attempts to antagonize other comments, are not tolerated. Respectful disagreement is encouraged. Posts that continually express the same singular opinion will be deleted.
  • Comments that incite political, religious or similar debates will be deleted.
  • Please do not discuss, or post links to websites that illegally stream NHL games.
  • Posting under multiple user names is not allowed. Do not type in all caps. All violations are subject to comment deletion and/or banning of commenters, per the discretion of the blog administrator.

Repeated violations of the blog rules will result in site bans, commensurate with the nature and number of offenses.

Please flag any comments that violate the site rules for moderation. For immediate problems regarding problematic posts, please email zdooley@lakings.com.