Washington Capitals Grades: Daniel Sprong 2021 Report Card

The Washington Capitals have been a team that has had plenty of offensive depth over the years. This past season was no different. That depth was maybe even deeper when you consider early in the 2020 off-season they signed forward Daniel Sprong to a two year contract after acquiring him in a trade with the Anaheim Ducks near the 2020 trade deadline.

It wasn’t a sure thing he would produce. Coming into this season he had played in 97 career NHL games and had scored just 19 goals. Still, at a cap hit of $725k in each of those two years of his contract, it was really a no lose contract.

Sprong had a good first season in D.C. He scored 13 goals in 42 games. If he played in a full 82 game season scoring goals at that pace would have meant he scores 25 goals. Not bad considering his career high coming into this season was 14 goals with Anaheim in 2018-19. He also only played in 47 games that season.

On top of his 13 goals, Sprong also put up 20 points. That was a new career high, surpassing the 19 he scored, once again with the Ducks back in 18-19.

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If you are going to have a complaint against Sprong this season it would probably be this. He was not a lineup regular. However, when the team needed him, due to injury or even suspension he was there and he contributed.

When he was a “fill in” he was very good. He was very noticeable, he set up chances and scored plenty of goals. Filling in for Tom Wilson when he was suspended for seven games in early March Sprong scored 3 goals in those seven games. That prompted a lot of people, including myself, to wonder if Sprong deserved to be an everyday player for this team.

He did in fact get that chance after Wilson returned but the production dropped. After Wilson returned from suspension Sprong played in fifteen games scoring just one goal. He was then scratched but quickly was forced back into the lineup when the seemingly unbreakable Ovechkin had a bit of a break.

Filling in for the captain from April 24th to basically the end of the season Sprong scored 6 goals. He scored those 6 goals in just 8 games played. That means out of the 13 goals he scored on the season he scored 9 of them in fifteen games while replacing Wilson and Ovechkin. He scored 4 goals in the other 27 games he played.

That is your complaint with Sprong. He was a super sub if you will. He scored goals when he was filling in and trying to cement a spot in the lineup for himself, but when he got that spot his production dropped.

Taking a look at Sprong’s analytics it shows that he was a fairly average player. Most of his advanced stats hang around the 50% mark, some drop a little lower, but nothing awful and definitely nothing super impressive. Here are his numbers.

Corsi % – 50%

Scoring Chance For % – 48.76%

High Danger Attempts % – 49.67%

Expected Goals For % – 49.64%

Those numbers did improve in the playoffs, however I personally found him, like a lot of other Caps to be pretty invisible during the playoffs. He had just one point in the five game series, a secondary assists at that.

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Grade B: I wanted to give Sprong a higher grade than that. Again, he scored just 4 goals in 27 games when not filling in for one of the big guys. When he was filling in for those guys he was very, very good I thought. Those 27 games of not being as good and productive has to drop his grade in my opinion. A good season from him, but he can be more consistent.

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