Washington Capitals: How Many Goals Does Anthony Mantha Need To Score This Season

It’s looking like Anthony Mantha is going to have that proverbial microscope on him, possibly throughout his entire Washington Capitals tenure. He was brought over to the Caps at last seasons trade deadline in a pretty shocking blockbuster trade near the end of the deadline.

The Capitals got Mantha in return for fan favorite Jakub Vrana, Richard Panik, who struggled for a good majority of his time in D.C. and a 2021 first round pick. Detroit ended up sending that pick to Dallas. Detroit also got a 2022 second round pick. That’s a pretty hefty return for Mantha. Anyone costing a team that much will always have a bit of a target on their back, even more so when it cost a guy fans loved in Vrana.

Mantha can’t really control any of the perception that much can he? The only thing he can and should worry about is his game and scoring goals. Scoring goals is something he did very well upon arriving in Washington.

He became the first Washington Capital to ever score a goal in his first four games with the club. He had 5 points total in his first four games with the Caps and had 6 points in his first 6 games with the team. After that his production dried up.

In his last eight games of the season he had just two assists, no goals. He did not have much of an impact in the playoffs either, but to be fair, nobody did. Mantha finished the postseason with just two assists in the five game series against Boston. He didn’t really look threatening most nights, however, when your team is not helping you or incredibly banged up like the Caps were, perhaps he deserves a little slack.

This is going to be an important season for the 27-year-old winger. He has perhaps already received a bit of a break, at least in terms of potential fan heckling. Vrana will be missing a large chunk of the season in Detroit due to a shoulder injury. If he came flying out of the gates and performed like he did when he got to the Red Wings last season there would be even more pressure on Mantha.

Now, if that even happened, he won’t have to deal with that, allowing himself to focus solely on himself.

It will also be an important season because Mantha is likely going to lineup with some very talented line mates. Talent that, for the most part, wasn’t there when he was in Detroit. This season he will have the chance to line up next to the centers like Nicklas Backstrom and Evgeny Kuznetsov. Both of those guys, in my opinion, are top ten centers in the NHL, at least if one wants to be.

On the other side of those centers, Mantha will have a chance to play with Alex Ovechkin, Tom Wilson and maybe T.J. Oshie. A top six of Ovechkin, Backstrom, Oshie, Wilson, Kuznetsov and Mantha is something that a lot of other franchises around the NHL would probably be jealous of. Mantha has never had that much talent surrounding him, this could be massive for him, and maybe open him up for more chances and, hopefully, those chances lead to goals.

How many goals does he need to score to have a good season? Again, when you look at his team, he doesn’t need to go out and score forty or fifty. This team as a whole probably won’t struggle to put pucks in the net. With that being the case, it’s never going to be on one guy to score a ton of goals. Even though one of those guys will likely score a load of goals anyways.

Coming into this season, Mantha is one goal away from 100 career goals. He has 99 career goals in 316 games played in the NHL. If he just scores goals at that pace this season, he should score around 25 goals. Would that not be acceptable? That was basically what Vrana was doing while he was a Capital.

And, if you look at Vrana’s career compared to Mantha’s, Vrana is scoring less goals per game. Maybe he does better in Detroit going forward, who knows. Bottom line, if Mantha were to score around 25 goals this season, and maybe every season as a Cap, I’m not sure how you don’t take that.

So that is probably the mark we are looking at. For Anthony Mantha to have a good first full season with the Capitals I would say 25-30 goals would be a good season. Maybe 25-32, anything higher than 32 I think we would say Mantha is having a great season.