Before the season started one concern I had for the Washington Capitals was goal scoring.
Then the Washington Capitals came out of the gates firing and put themselves at the top of the NHL in terms of goals scored. At the end of November that’s where they still sit. They currently lead the NHL in goals scored at 88, the second place team being the Florida Panthers with 85, the Boston Bruins have scored 83.
Was it just a hot start? Did everything just go in to start the season? For the first 18 games of the season the Capitals were averaging just over four goals a game, 4.05 to be exact. The last two weeks that has dropped to 2.14 goals per game.
(Keep in mind the Capitals also lead the league in shots that have hit the post with 24 dingers so far. The next highest is Dallas, Edmonton and Calgary all at 19.)
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Along with the goals the team record doesn’t look as great. The hot goal scoring start got the Caps off to a 13-2-3 start, tops in the NHL, two points better than the defending Stanley Cup champion St. Louis Blues. With less goals being scored now the team is 3-2-2 in their last 7 games.
Washington has scored more than two goals only twice in the last two weeks and that was in the game vs the Anaheim Ducks and vs the Coyotes on the 11th. They scored one vs. the Flyers, two vs. the Canadiens, two vs. Boston, one vs. the Rangers and one vs. the Canucks.
Is this something to worry about? It’s tough to say yet. It’s still too early to tell which Capitals team this is. Is this going to be a high scoring team like we saw for basically the first quarter of the season or will it continue to be a team that has to win lower scoring games?
Who needs to get going for the Caps to pull out of this goal scoring funk they have going a bit here? To get out of funks you usually have to look to your big guns. In this case the Ovechkin’s, the Backstrom’s, the Kuznetsov’s, the Oshie’s, etc. How have these guys been during the down spell?
Ovechkin has two goals in the last seven games. Not bad but when the team needs goals maybe that could be a bit higher. Hard to put this on him though, he’s fine and his goals will come. Kuznetsov has four goals in the last seven games, that’s pretty good.
T.J. Oshie has two goals in the last seven games. That’s still fine but maybe he’s cooling down after a somewhat hot start. Tom Wilson has just one goal in the last 7 games and that was a somewhat fortunate bounce into an empty net for him.
Finally Jakub Vrana has two goals in his last seven, apparently average for the team but he has two in the last three games meaning he’s potentially heating up.
The last big name to mentioned among the forwards is Nicklas Backstrom who has missed the last couple games due to injury. He only has four goals in the 23 games he’s played in and he’s on pace to have one of his worst seasons in his career so far.
If you want to look at goals from the defense there really is only one big threat and that is obviously John Carlson and he’s goalless in the last seven games. He does still have eight assists in those seven games however.
If you want to look at where the Capitals need to get help from it’s the depth players. The third and fourth line need to help out in the scoring department. Guys like Lars Eller who has a total of five goals so far this year. He has zero goals in the last seven games.
Carl Hagelin who has been injured for a couple of weeks now hasn’t scored yet this season. Richard Panik has just one goal in 15 games this season. Stephenson has three goals in 21 games.
To me it’s those guys that have to get going and going somewhat consistently for the Capitals. The third liners or whoever is playing on the third line. We know the Capitals top six or top two lines can get the job done but they need help.
The top two lines have slowed down and bit and now this is where we are. Dropping nearly two goals a game.
Again, who knows if this is something to worry about. A two week stretch in the season is a really small sample size. But this is something that concerned me going into the season and maybe it just took longer than expected to happen.
In the off-season the Capitals did lose nearly fifty goals in Burakovsky, Connolly among others. This maybe be the most thin the Capitals roster has been in a while in terms of goal scoring. If the top lines aren’t scoring can this team make a deep run?
When the games get more and more important and defenses lock down teams top threats better can the depth on this team pitch in?
With the defense potentially being a question for this team they are going to need the depth on this team, the third and fourth line to get some goals. In the last two weeks that has been amplified in my opinion.