It wasn’t as easy this week for the Washington Capitals as it has been almost throughout this season.
It was a week where the Washington Capitals got challenged and honestly could have lost all four games that were played. They were down 3-0 to Arizona but won in a shootout, were outplayed against the Flyers but won in a shootout, got beat up by the Canadiens for the worst loss this season and won in a shootout in Boston after a late tying goal by T.J. Oshie.
The offense wasn’t flying and the defense continues to be a question, at least for me. At the end of the day however it was a week where the Capitals went 3-1-0 and that, no matter how it’s accomplished is a successful week.
Who’s performance should we single out this week? It’s a little tough again. It was a week where there was not many consistent standouts. Since that’s the case we’ll have to rely on stats again this week. With that being said we’ll start right now.
John Carlson
I suppose if you don’t know who to name in your stars of the week, putting the front runner for the Norris Trophy is a safe bet. But he put up the stats this week as well so this is not a star by default.
Carlson tied for the team lead in points this week, no goals but he did get four assists with three of those being primary. Carlson is on a six game point streak and has 9 points during this streak, he has 1 goal and eight assists in this streak.
His advanced stats were stars of the week caliber as well. His Corsi% was 55.09% which was 7th on the team, second among defensemen behind only Dmitry Orlov. One of the more impressive things about Carlson’s week however was how many scoring chances the Capitals had with 74 on the ice. Washington had 59 chances with their star defenseman on the ice, by far the best on the team this week. Second most was Orlov who had 45.
The impressive part about that was Orlov played twelve more minutes than Carlson this week.
Finally, Carlson also led the team in high danger attempts percentage this week, when on the ice the Caps had 19 high danger attempts for and nine against for a 67.86%.
It wasn’t a week where he blew us all away, but he put up the stats and the advanced stats tell us he did more to help his team than hurt them. All these numbers tell us Carlson deserves to be one of our stars of the week.