Lars Eller Is Having A Rough Season In More Ways Than One

Lars Eller is a very big part of this Washington Capitals team and has been ever since he came to D.C. via trade in 2016. Capitals fans will know this so me explaining it is somewhat pointless. We all know what he has brought to this team over the past half decade and more.

Simply and probably most importantly is he helps bring the Capitals some of the best center depth in the entire National Hockey League. Over the past couple of seasons that center lineup has been Evgeny Kuznetsov up top, followed by team legend and future hall of famer Nicklas Backstrom, Eller coming in the third slot followed by Nic Dowd anchoring the fourth trio.

Not bad if I do say so myself. Center depth can be massive. I don’t think I am in the wrong when I say some playoff series have been determined at least in part thanks to a team being stronger down the middle. In my opinion, the Capitals don’t really have many teams to fear in this category.

Eller is usually very dependable. Over the past couple of years he has had his best seasons as an NHL player. Between 2017 and 2020 Eller was having his best seasons, posting career highs in goals and points. Not to mention he won a Stanley Cup in those years and of course scoring the Cup winning goal.

This season, at least up to this point, Eller has taken a step back. His numbers are some of his worst since coming to Washington. It’s been a rough season for him, maybe understandably.

Before we look at Eller’s numbers, lets get the obvious reason he might be having a down year. COVID. Eller has landed on that list twice this season, both times with the team on a road trip and as a result both times he got stuck in the city the team was in at the time. That most recently happening in Vancouver. The other time was earlier in the season when he got stuck in Anaheim during the Capitals California trip.

That cannot be easy for any reason. One time he apparently did get minorly sick, so he would have to fight that off. I don’t really care what anyone says, getting sick at all sucks. Whether that is a little cold or a bad fever, it is no fun, ever. As a result he was forced to miss games. It’s never good missing games because then you have to work your way back, at least a little bit.

Landing on the COVID list twice and getting stuck in cities that is not your home city is rough. Eller has done that two times now.

Can we now blame him that he is having a bit of a down year? How much of a down season is Eller having?

Currently Eller has 23 points in 56 games played. That isn’t too bad for him. He is probably on target for another thirty point season or close to it at least. That is what you can expect from him nearly every season.

His point per game right now is .41. That is what is down from recent seasons. Lets compare that to recent seasons.

Last season he was having a great season. His points per game was all the way up to .52. If he were to play an 82 game season at that pace he would have scored about 42 points, which would have been a career high.

The season before that, the 2019-20 season Eller scored 39 points in 69 games. That means his point per game was .56. That also would have been a career high in points had he played 82 games, he could have gotten around 45 or 46 points.

In 2018-19 he scored 36 points in 81 games. That gave him a points per game of .44. Finally in the 17-18 season he scored 38 points in 81 games or a .46 point per game mark.

In his first season in Washington Eller had a .30 point per game mark and he scored 25 points in 81 games. To make it easy, Eller is having the worst season in Washington since his first season here.

Like we said earlier, Eller is dependable. For the most part, you probably know what you’re going to get from him. He will put up a good amount of points for a third liner while still giving you good advanced numbers. This season his productivity is down and his underlying numbers are also down.

The last two seasons you should probably say Eller was one of the best in terms in Corsi%. Between 2019 and 2021 he had a Corsi% of 55.51%. The guys that were better than he was in that stat all played 14 games or less. Eller in that time played in 113 games in that span. The next closest to Eller who played in a similar number of games was Dmirty Orlov who was at 52.83%. The next best forward was at 51.59%, that was Carl Hagelin who had played in 114 games.

This season Eller has a Corsi% of just 48.88%. Out of the 34 players to skate for the Capitals this season that ranks 25th.

Thanks to being down in shot attempts that also means the scoring chances have come down a bit as well. This season Eller has a scoring chance for % of 47.26%, that is 31st of the 34 skaters this season. Again, going back the past couple of seasons he had a 54.52 SCF%. That was among the best, or the best if you consider the amount of games the guys ahead of him played. Travis Boyd played the most games of the guys ahead of him and he played in just 24 games.

Finally this season Eller has a 47.15 high danger attempts%. Very much down from the 53.29 he had from the past couple of seasons.

His points are down, his advanced stats are down and he has had a couple of COVID issues this season. I think it’s fair to say Lars Eller has had a pretty rough season, in more ways than one as well. The Capitals are going to need him and his line to play well come playoff time. Here’s to hoping he can get things going a little better as the season winds down.