What We Learned: Examining the Washington Capitals hot start
Last season's Washington Capitals were among the worst playoff teams in recent memory.
Not only did they barely scrape into the postseason with just 91 points. Not only did they get swept in ugly fashion out of the first round. Not only did they have poor underlying numbers. Perhaps the most damning stat of all — whether the stat is damning for them or the rest of the Eastern Conference is up for debate — was that they were a playoff team despite having the sixth-worst goal difference in the league. In reality, they got into the playoffs because a career respectable-backup goaltender in Charlie Lindgren went .930ish for a couple months. You gotta hand it to 'em.
So, like any team with playoff aspirations and dreams of getting their franchise player to the all-time goals record would, they set out over the summer to improve their roster. They moved around some pieces in the bottom six, which is fine to do. They signed Matt Roy and traded for Jakob Chychrun to improve their defense. They traded their starting goalie for Pierre-Luc Dubois, and got Logan Thompson and Andrew Mangiapane without subtracting from their roster at all. There was some risk associated with basically all these transactions but the practical upshot was simple: The roster that delivered a playoff appearance and otherwise poor results had improved, but not to the extent that you'd feel comfortable saying they would finish with a positive goal difference, let alone that they would be one of the best teams in the league.
But here we are 11 games in, and that's where they're at right now. They're 8-3-0, having just lost to Carolina on the tail end of a back-to-back (we call that a "schedule loss") but still comfortably top-three in a highly competitive division, and sixth in the league in points percentage. You could easily say you saw this story last year, except that they also have some of the best underlying numbers in the league. We're talking about 60 percent of the expected goals in all situations, a number that dips only slightly at 5-on-5. You're hard-pressed to find anyone on the team whose underlyings don't look good, and the puck is also flying into the net for them. And they're actually doing all this winning despite an .889 team save percentage (which sounds horrendous but the league average right now is only .891, so it's not that bad).
The question you absolutely have to ask is how this is happening. How did a team that was so bad last year (despite fluking their way into the playoffs) take this big of a step? For one thing, at least early on, it seems as though their bets on young players are all paying off simultaneously. Dylan Strome, whom they signed as a free agent in 2022 as something of a troubled asset, leads the team in scoring. Connor McMichael and Alexei Protas have turned into legitimate contributors after being "y'know, fine" last season. Mangiapane shook loose from Calgary and has the best underlyings on the team. Chychrun's been good in basically all situations. Rasmus Sandin, whom they pulled out of Toronto in early 2023, has delivered. Martin Fehervary continues his ascent up the aging curve. And somehow basically all the old guys have found the Fountain of Youth, led by Alex Ovechkin, who is now just 35 goals from breaking an unbreakable record.
This may just be a case of the sum being greater than the whole of its parts, and Spencer Carbery potentially being a coaching genius who figured it all out in one summer. The only problem the team has — and I truly mean the only one right now — is that the power play stinks. And you might argue it has enough talent standing at the top of the left circle alone for that to turn around pretty quickly.
It's difficult to make heads or tails of why this is all happening. Not just the winning, because you could normally dismiss as "they're shooting 14 percent as a team, and that's it" which for the record they are. But because the underlyings are so good, and they're generating more high-danger scoring chances than any team in the league — their high-dangers per 60 in all situations is currently on par with what the Oilers did over the last few years — they're not just another PDO team. Not really. They've only outpaced their own expected goals slightly, not to the absurd degree their shooting efficiency would suggest, but you might say that's not supported by their overall talent level. I think you'd be correct about that. But at the same time, you gotta consider that almost half of their total overperformance on that front is McMichael going nuts to start the season, so we're not talking about anything too crazy yet. If the shooting percentage normalizes and the results kinda shrink back toward expected-goals rates, then they're still going to keep posting some of the best results in the league because, again, they're running at 60 percent of the xGs in all situations.
It must also be said that they haven't exactly played a soft schedule. New Jersey twice, Vegas, Dallas, Tampa, the Rangers, and now Carolina? Yeah they beat the Flyers a combined 10-4 in a back-to-back a week and a half ago, and then this weekend they beat Montreal and Columbus by a combined score of 13-5. Even when you're elite, you're maybe supposed to just barely beat the good teams and kill the bad ones, and that's exactly what they've done to date. Through 10 games, they have a big advantage in shots on goal (made significantly smaller by them getting shelled 45-21 last night). Taken as a whole, it's all you can ask for, really.
Of course, almost no one puts up 60 percent of the expected goals for an entire season. And the ones that do tend to be teams that were universally recognized as great both before and after their given season (2020-21 Colorado, 2013-14 San Jose, 2007-08 Detroit, etc.). Not sure we can put the Caps in that category with a straight face, even with this molten start. And still, those teams didn't exactly finish with an .750 points percentage.
So we can expect the Caps to slow down, for sure. But given the points they've already banked and their overall quality of play, something would have to go really, really wrong for them to end up being at risk of missing the playoffs. The question, then, is how competitive you think they're gonna be come March or April, and the jury is out. My guess, as far as meaningfully being in the running for the Stanley Cup, would be "not very."
But they've defied expectations to a ludicrous extent so far. They would say, "Why can't we keep this up?" And even just 10 games in, it's gotta feel good to be able to ask that question.
What We Learned
Anaheim Ducks: Honestly, being .500 through 10 games has to feel like a little bit of a win. They've played seven road games. Not easy!
Boston Bruins: Gonna be fun to do the "the Bruins are fine"/"fire everybody" thing for every game they win or lose for the next month.
Buffalo Sabres: There's a silver lining on every dark cloud, folks.
Calgary Flames: Nice to celebrate 1,000 career games — where does the time go? — but, the way things had been going, probably nicer to win.
Carolina Hurricanes: They sure didn't exceed my expectations. I knew they would do this. Check the preseason Power Feelings.
Chicago: How do you "get lucky" to "launch November turnaround" on Nov. 2? What?
Colorado Avalanche: Fascinated to see how this works out. Gotta hope for the best.
Columbus Blue Jackets: Hey, they had a nice little run there. Then the big kids showed up and beat them 13-4 on aggregate over the weekend. Oops.
Dallas Stars: This whole "the best players aren't scoring" thing seems to be catching up with them.
Detroit Red Wings: Okay but can they do this against a real team?
Edmonton Oilers: He's already skating. This guy's not human.
Los Angeles Kings: Can't be dropping games like this. Period.
Minnesota Wild: I wouldn't say "very," so that's good.
Montreal Canadiens: Kinda the way it goes for rough-and-tumble players, eh?
Nashville Predators: One of?
New Jersey Devils: Probably not and probably not, in that order.
New York Islanders: It just goes from bad to worse.
New York Rangers: Can you change the role of a guy who makes $8.5 million against the cap?
Ottawa Senators: I think the Sens can be satisfied with where they're at right now, but all this "room to grow" they're talking about, I dunno.
Philadelphia Flyers: We're already talking about overcoming hurdles in the relationship between the best player and the coach. Cool.
Pittsburgh Penguins: It's all fixed! Plan the parade!
San Jose Sharks: This is gonna be a really interesting trade to watch for the next year-plus.
Seattle Kraken: Looks like the frustration level is rising in Seattle. Can't blame 'em, but the roster is still the roster.
St. Louis Blues: Just an awful injury. Horrible all around.
Tampa Bay Lightning: Pretty interesting. I wonder what this is all gonna mean for the Bolts a few years down the road. They just lost a guy widely considered one of the best owners in the league.
Toronto Maple Leafs: How badly are they mishandling the ice time situation for you-know-who (yet again) when this take is getting out there? Woof.
Utah [fill in the blank later]: I'm glad it worked. The question is how many times it will work in the future.
Vancouver Canucks: Eyeballs emoji.
Vegas Golden Knights: This was one of very few missing pieces in their start. Look out.
Washington Capitals: You hate to say "shooting 22 percent," but…
Winnipeg Jets: Like I said, all you can ask for from a good team is beating the hell out of a bad team that happens to be on the schedule. Here we are.
Play of the Weekend
Real nice goal by Matt Copponi here.
https://x.com/florianazcon/status/1852983220700057958
Gold Star Award
Joonas Korpisalo and Anton Forsberg both had shutouts on Saturday. Where was this kind of goaltending for the Sens last year, eh?
Minus of the Weekend
Four different guys on the Blue Jackets were on the ice for five goals against at 5-on-5 across their two games on Friday and Saturday. Gotta mix up that line, I think.
Perfect HFBoards Trade Proposal of the Week
User "Brookbank" is dialed in:
Petterson/Jack Eichel swap
A career PPG player has never been broken. But if there was a fanbase that could do it , it would be Vancouver. Pettersons personality just doesn't work with the market. Whatever his problem is , the market is sure to make it worse. And Tocchet is already taking the media's side. And fuelling it himself.
Vegas is always game for a flashy move. Maybe they'd be interested in a Petterson Eichel swap. With maybe some tinkering on the margins. Kinda like the Havlat/Heatly deal.
Petterson is 25. Eichel is 28. Vegas woild win the trade just based on that.
