Washington Capitals: Most Intriguing Players To Watch This Upcoming Season
The most intriguing Washington Capitals players this season.
The NHL looks to have its start day and we will be playing hockey this season after all. The obvious caveat here is with the season starting so late and with the league wanting to get back on a regular schedule and needing to be off TV for the upcoming Olympics this will not be an 82 games season. Instead it looks as if the league has settled on playing 56 games with some kind of modified playoffs.
This season will look different. There will be twenty-six less games than usual and the divisions will be altered thanks to the pandemic. But, hockey is hockey. As long as it’s safe it will be great to watch this sport, this league and this Washington Capitals team again.
Just like every season there are some players that go into the season that are more intriguing than others. Now with the season apparently very close it’s time to take a look at some of the more interesting players to watch for this upcoming and shortened season.
John Carlson
John Carlson is coming off of his best season as a pro. Last season he played in just 69 regular season games for the Capitals, he posted career high numbers, notably career highs in assists (60) and points (75). He was also nominated for the Norris Trophy for best defenseman in the NHL last season.
While he is getting older, that doesn’t mean we’ve seen the best that Carlson has to offer. With the Capitals window seemingly getting tighter and tighter every season it will be interesting to see how the stars of this team plays for the next couple of seasons. Carlson being a star of this side is no exception.
He won’t be setting a career high this season thanks to the shortened schedule. So what would a similar season look like from Carlson?
Last season Carlson scored 75 points in 69 games, meaning he put up about 1.08 points per game. If he plays in all 56 games this season and bumps that number up to just 1.10 per game he has a chance to score 62 points. Anything less than that means he had a worse scoring season than the previous season.
Every season for the next few seasons should be intriguing for John Carlson. His best season may not be behind him. Any season could be his best going forward. A Norris Trophy could still very much be in the cards for Carlson. Could this be his year?
Jakub Vrana
Jakub Vrana is just getting into his prime years. That makes this year and the next year or two very interesting for him. We will soon see just how good this player will be for the next seven or eight seasons.
Like Carlson, Vrana is coming off his best season as a professional. He beat his career bests in all scoring categories, he had 25 goals, 27 assists and 52 points. His previous bests came in 2018-19 where he had 24 goals, 23 assists and 47 points. He set his new bests while playing thirteen fewer games.
Thirty goals is in this player’s future for sure. Going forward, not scoring thirty goals and sixty points every year, while maybe not disappointing but it should definitely be considered a down year.
In a shortened season thirty goals is unlikely for Vrana. If Vrana were to score thirty goals in 56 games that would mean he is around the forty goals mark in an average season. This isn’t to say he can’t do it, forty goals may be in his future. I just think it’s unlikely to be this season.
If we want to see progress in the goal scoring department from Vrana he should aim for about twenty goals this season. Scoring just over twenty goals this season would mean in an average 82 game year he would have cracked the thirty goal mark. At the same time, getting about 41 points in this shortened season will also mean about 60 points in a regular season.
If we see those numbers this season that will mean Vrana took another step up in his development. I think this guy is a huge part of the Capitals future. If everything goes well he could be a star for this team for years to come. This season marks the first year where I think Vrana is a must watch going forward.
Ilya Samsonov
I think this one is a slam dunk. The goaltending position is one of the most important, and one of the toughest positions in all sports if you ask me. It’s up there with quarterback in football in my opinion. A bad quarterback on a pretty good team probably won’t go too far. The same can be said for a goalie in hockey.
From what we’ve seen from Ilya Samsonov early in his NHL career there is no reason to call him bad by any means. There is just very little to go on which means there are plenty of questions going forward.
There are even more questions for this season now that his help and the teams safety net in Henrik Lundqvist will be sitting out the season thanks to some health concerns.
Samsonov is just 23 years old or will be 24 early in this next season. Age isn’t the big concern. The concern is his lack of NHL experience having played only 26 career games at the highest level of hockey.
Samsonov started his career just about as well as you could want. From the start of last season until mid January he had a 2.06 goals against average and a .927 save percentage.
The part you can question him on is after that he hit a skid for his last seven games of the season. His final seven games of the 2019-20 season saw him have a 4.11 GAA and a .873 save percentage. He has not played an NHL game since March 5th, a game against the New York Rangers where he surrendered 6 goals on 39 shots. That being an overtime loss, also known as the Zibanejad five goal game.
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Samsonov has shown his ability for sure. But, he has not shown his ability to be an everyday starter in the NHL. Until he does there has to be questions. Those questions makes Samsonov the most intriguing player on this Capitals team next season.