Washington Capitals Grades: Nick Jensen 2021 Report Card

Nick Jensen did not have the best of starts to his Washington Capitals career. After coming to the Capitals near the 2019 trade deadline Jensen struggled to find his role in Washington. Perhaps if you would like to be more blunt, he wasn’t very good more often than not.

After scoring fifteen points in each of his last two seasons in Detroit (15 in 81 games in 17-18 and 15 in 60 games before he was traded in 18-19) Jensen was only able to put up 13 points in his first 88 games as a member of the Capitals. Points probably are not how you should determine how a guy like Jensen is playing, but that just another example of him struggling to find his footing in D.C.

He struggled so much so that he was a healthy scratch at points during the 2019-20 season. Not the best looking move at that point for Caps General Manager Brain MacLellan.

This past season was a possibly a rebound season for Jensen. Again, maybe points shouldn’t be how we judge a player like him, but he did put up 14 points in just 53 games played. If he played the full 82 (or 79 in his case having missed three games) he was on pace to have 20 points, which would have tied his career high which he got in 2018-19 when he split time between Detroit and Washington.

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His advanced numbers were some of the best in terms of Capitals defensemen. His shot attempts percentage was pretty average. He sported a 50.24 Corsi percentage which was fifth out of the eight Capitals defensemen that played this season.

While his shot attempt numbers aren’t especially impressive, it’s the underlying numbers of the attempts that were more impressive.

Jensen was ranked second in Scoring Chance For percentage, High Danger Attempts percentage and expected Goals For percentage. He ranked second behind a guy who played in thirty-three less games than he did as well. That guy was Trevor van Riemsdyk who played in twenty games to Jensen’s fifty-three.

Jensen’s SCF% was 52.50%, his HDCF% was 54.76% and his xGF% was 53.58%. All somewhat impressive numbers, and all better than the bigger names that are also on the Capitals blue line.
Numbers are just numbers though. Some care about the numbers, most probably don’t. Most fans just care about how they do and look on the ice. The good news for Jensen is that a lot of the time he looked good on the ice as well.

In new head coach Peter Laviolette’s system Jensen seemed to thrive. He looked comfortable, he looked confident, and forgive me for repeating myself and now sounding redundant, he just looked much better. He was on the ice for more chances for than against, the numbers prove that, and he looked great when carrying the puck up the ice. He was fast and got the puck out of the bad side of the ice and onto the good side. When doing this I thought more times than not he looked better than any other Capitals defenseman.

Jensen played most of his time on the third D pair with newcomer Zdeno Chara. He played over 575 minutes with Chara this season while only playing 176 minutes without the veteran. While not the Capitals greatest pair, it was still a very good third pair for most of the season.

I find it hard to judge Jensen. This was easily his finest season in the Capitals red, white and blue. Did he peak this season? Likely being without Chara next season, will he be able to replicate this season? Can the now thirty year old, soon to be thirty-one year old get better for this team? All questions that will be asked and answered at a later date.

More. Washington Capitals: Top 3 best moments of 2021 season. light

As for now, I would say Jensen had a very successful season. If you had to give him a rating, I think a solid B would be appropriate. Jensen looked much better this season. He can still get beat defensively, but that pretty much goes for everybody on the Capitals blue line. Overall, a nice season from Nick Jensen.

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