Washington Capitals: Predicting the Top Five Goal Scorers for 2021-2022
By David Atlas
The Washington Capitals will remain one of the most potent offenses in the NHL during the upcoming 2021-2022 season. Alex Ovechkin, the eight-time Rocket Richard winner, will once again led the team in goals, just like he has every year since he has been in the league.
The question is, who will be numbers 2 through 5?
If you look back to a season ago, Ovechkin led the team with 24 goals, followed closely by TJ Oshie with 22, Nicklas Backstrom with 15, Anthony Mantha with 15 (however, he only scored 4 with the Caps after being a trade deadline acquisition), Conor Sheary with 14, and both Tom Wilson and Daniel Sprong adding 13 each to round out the top five. Turning back the clock to 2019-2020, when the NHL played almost a full-slate of games, the results change slightly. Ovechkin led the team with 48 goals, good for a tie with David Pastranak for the league-lead, followed by Oshie (26), Jakub Vrana (25), Wilson (21), and Evgeny Kuznetsov (19) to round out the top five.
This season, expect to see familiar faces up and down the list. Partly because this is largely the same core of players that have taken the ice at the Capital One Arena and partly because this is a consistent group of guys. An honorable mention to both Nicklas Backstrom and Evgeny Kuznetsov who were both left off this list but will still amass at least 20 goals in 2021-2022.