Washington Capitals: Upcoming Player Milestones To Watch For
By CJ Witt
With training camp starting and the preseason just around the corner it is officially time to be excited about the upcoming National Hockey League and Washington Capitals season. It’s the time of year where you get to see your new teams and new players. It’s the time of year that brings hope to fans of nearly every team. Hope to see improvements from the year before. Hope your team can take the next step. And hope to see your team lift the Stanley Cup in about nine months.
Usually when you get excited about training camp it’s centered around a couple of things. Fans get excited to see the new acquisitions. In the Capitals case, that really isn’t the case this season. The other is to see how the next crop of prospects do in camp and in preseason. Capitals fans having a little more to watch there with the likes of Connor McMichael and Hendrix Lapierre possibly being the most exciting to watch going forward.
While the new and young guys are the most fun to watch you can also get excited by seeing the “old” guys come back to town and playing on your favorite team once again. For the most part, it is those veterans that we will be looking at today.
In honor of training camp getting underway and the season being just around the corner now it’s time to do something I always love to do before seasons start. It’s time to take a look at who can hit some career milestones.
It’s always fun to watch a player hit a milestone. A first goal, a 500th game, a 1,000th point. Sometimes these things can sneak up on us however. We won’t know it until the TV broadcast mentions that it happened or that it can happen on pre-game. With this, we hope to show you and make you aware that it’s possible that a milestone can be achieved this season and that milestone won’t sneak up on you.
Nicklas Backstrom
Nicklas Backstrom is on the verge of a couple of milestones and one bigger than the other. Backstrom is currently sitting on 980 career points. I’m only going to say this next line once, because it applies to everybody, every season. Barring anything bad happening, Backstrom should hit one of the biggest milestones you can hit as an NHL player.
The NHL has been around for over 100 years, there has only been 91 players who have scored 1,000 points or more. Backstrom will soon join that list of players.
On top of his total point milestone, Backstrom will also hit another point century mark. When Backstrom scores his 4th power play point of the season that will mean that he has scored 400 power play points in his career.
You expect Backstrom to score over 20 power play points a year. Depending on how this season goes he could crack to top fifty in career power play points. He will need to get to 423 to get into the top fifty and pass Dino Ciccarelli.