The Washington Capitals Are An Average Team Ten Games Into The Season
The Washington Capitals are now ten games through the 2023-24 NHL season. We are roughly one-eigth of the way through the season. This is not the time to celebrate if you are a good team. This is also no time to panic or freak out if you are a fan of a bad team.
If you are a Capitals fan, you are somewhere between those two extremes. Washington is not a good team, but they are not bad either. Through the first ten games of the season the Capitals have proved to us they are a pretty average hockey team.
That’s not the worst thing to be right now either. It’s better to be average right now than poor. Just ask yourselves this. Would you rather be an average Capitals team, with a record of 5-4-1? Or would you rather perhaps be a fan of a team like the Edmonton Oilers? A team with a lot of expectations who through their first ten games are 2-7-1.
See. Being average isn’t the worst thing in the world.
To be average means you don’t have much bad that is absolutely sinking you. Maybe a defense is so bad that you’re bleeding chances against left and right. Maybe your goaltending can’t stop an oversized beach ball. Maybe nobody on your team can score a goal.
But it also means that you don’t really have anything that great that is propelling you to the top of the standings.
I think that perfectly sums up the Washington Capitals. They’re not really great at anything, but they don’t really have any fatal flaw either.
It’s been an interesting start to the season, and since we are now ten games into the campaign what better time than now to take a look at a couple of things this team has shown us.
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.
The Defense Isn’t Too Bad
Coming into the season I was really worried about the defense when I looked at the lineup. Ten games into the season and the results are not too bad. Actually, they look pretty good. It might have gotten off to a rocky start. They allowed 23 goals in their first six games. But they have recovered and over the past four games they have allowed just 7 goals.
That means they have allowed 30 total goals this season. That ranks in the top ten in the NHL so far this year.
They are not just dodging haymakers either. They have allowed 222 scoring chances while at full and even strength, which is top ten. They have also allowed 96 high danger attempts which is in the top half of the league as well.
I was not expecting this team to be good on defense at all. We also need to point out, we’re not sure if they are good or if they are just in a good spell here against some weaker or struggling teams.
Are the Capitals actually pretty good on defense? Are they what they have been the last four games? Or are they the team that let up four to the Penguins, six to the Senators, four to the Devils and got absolutely destroyed for a period that game?
Ten games is a good sample size to figure things out about a team. But this one is kind of split down the middle. The numbers look good, the recent results have been good, but I want more evidence they can be good defensively for a longer period of time.
The Penalty Kill Looks More Impressive Than Their PK%
Right now the penalty kill ranks 14th in the league, not bad, at 79.4%, not very good. At one point the Capitals allowed 7 goals on 22 power plays against. Since then they have killed 12 straight power plays. I think it’s fair to say they have found their way while shorthanded.
There is one thing we need to talk about, even when their penalty kill was struggling.
If it wasn’t for their PK this team could easily have three more regulation losses. Instead of being 5-4-1 they could be 3-7-0. Thanks to penalty troubles, the Caps could have or should have lost to the Flames, the Canadiens and the Wild. But the penalty kill, even while struggling, came up huge, and I mean HUGE in those games. Killing late penalties, killing 5 on 3’s, killing too many third period penalties in tie games or games they were trailing.
Without their penalty kill that has struggled for half of this season they could be in a lot more trouble than they are in. The percentage may not be the best, but they are getting better, and it has saved the Capitals more than once this season. Don’t forget that right now.
Evgeny Kuznetsov Looks Better…Kind Of
For the last several seasons, when you watch Capitals games, a lot of the time you had to go looking for number 92. He would not be playing well enough to where he would stand out. With his skill level that is a massive problem. You should not have to go looking for players with the skill and talent Kuznetsov has. They should stand out almost every game.
This season so far I have noticed Kuznetsov a lot more. He’s noticeable, it looks like he is going pretty much every night. He is setting up some chances and even getting some of his own chances.
We already talked about a potential lack of forward depth. If that is the case the Capitals need their stars to play well. For the most part, Kuznetsov is playing pretty good.
Then you look at the stats and you find out that Kuznetsov has just one goal and five points in ten games. He is playing better. He is making himself visible almost every night. But he still is not making enough of an impact in games.
To be fair, Kuznetsov is a playmaker. If he has teammates that have trouble finishing there isn’t much he can do. But he can score goals too. One goal through ten games isn’t enough on a team that needs scoring help.
He’s been better, but he didn’t exactly have a high bar to clear coming into this season.
Nicklas Backstrom
This could easily be the headline of the season, almost no matter what happens. Have we seen the last of the Capitals legend?
Coming into this season I saw and heard a lot of people saying how great Backstrom looked. Nobody seemed to want to talk about his injuries. Even he himself said he was tired of talking about his recent injury history.
Yet here we are, not even ten games into the season and Backstrom is “taking time away” from the team due to an “ongoing injury situation”.
He looked incredibly slow while he was playing. He was not having much of an impact on the ice at all. The last few games he had some of the lowest time on ice among forwards. In his last three games his time on ice was 12:40, 11:55 and 12:24. Incredibly low for a guy like Backstrom.
I’m not sure what he brought to the team anymore. At least on the ice. I’m sure he brought leadership in the room. But the Caps have plenty of that. Ovechkin, Carlson, Wilson, Oshie. It’s not like the team has a lack of leaders.
Unfortunately, it looks like injuries have done in one of the best playmakers of his time. One way or another. He is either unable to play, or when he does play he is unable to make much of an impact any longer.
light. Related Story. Capitals down Blue Jackets for 1,000 wins on home ice
Lets hope we see Backstrom on the ice once again and he is able to end his career more on his terms and on better terms.