The Washington Capitals Are An Average Team Ten Games Into The Season

They Still Aren’t Great At Scoring Goals

In fact that might be a bit of an understatement. At the time of writing this the Capitals have scored a total of 19 goals in the ten games they’ve played. Since I like making things even more negative, how does this sound? They have also only scored 12 goals while 5v5 this season. Both of those goal totals rank 31st in the entire NHL.

I said this team doesn’t really have a fatal flaw. This is probably the biggest one that could cost them if they don’t figure it out. Combine that with something else we’ll talk about later, the defense.

Dylan Strome currently leads the team with 6 goals. The other scorers are Tom Wilson at 3, Alex Ovechkin, Connor McMichael and Sonny Milano at 2 and Evgeny Kuznetsov, John Carlson, Anthony Mantha and Matthew Phillips all have 1.

T.J. Oshie has not scored and has just one point. Nicklas Backstrom did not score while he was playing, and he also had just one point.

This team does not have great scoring depth. Kuznetsov needs to have more than one goal in ten games. Anthony Mantha started the season on the 4th line and was quickly a healthy scratch, they need him again, he has just one. If you don’t have good depth at forward you probaly need your D to score. They have just one goal from Carlson.

If you don’t have great depth you need your stars to shine. Again, Kuznetsov isn’t scoring goals, Oshie isn’t, Backstrom wasn’t. What about Ovechkin? Two goals in ten games is not bad. But it is below his usual pace. Is he slowing down? I asked before the season started what would happen if he did slow down? Could they survive that?

This is a middling/bottom half of the league in terms of generating chances. Again, not bad, but not great. This is a team that is going to need to cash in on their chances. I’m just not sold that they have to players to do that.

You want the biggest concern. This is it.