2023-24 Rink Wrap: John Carlson

The Charts:

The Key Stat(s): Carlson, who turned 34 halfway through the season, didn’t miss a game in 2023-24 (the eighth time he’s played every game in a season) and led all skaters in ice time. Not Caps skaters, mind you, but all skaters in the League.

The Good: There’s an argument to be made that 2023-24 was the most impressive season of John Carlson’s career. It’s not an argument for which you’re likely to find much support in the charts above or in spreadsheets full of stats, fancy or otherwise. It’s more narrative based, more anecdotal and eye test than defined and quantifiable. It’s more “vibes,” which, not coincidentally, in many ways mirrors the story of the 2023-24 Washington Capitals.

But considering the injury-halved 2022-23 season from which he was returning, the on-the-fly rebuild the Caps’ roster has undergone in the past year, the coaching change, the aging core of the team, the rest of the Caps’ blueline going all “Spin̈al Tap drummer“… to help drag this team to the playoffs at his age may not have been Carlson’s “best” season, but certainly may have been his most impressive.

That said, the counting stats were pretty darn good too. Carlson scored 10 goals (including a pair of game winners in the last week of the season and another in the playoffs) and added 42 assists, good for 17th among NHL rearguards in points. He played the toughest minutes and took only 15 minor penalties (while drawing 15), roughly one every five-and-a-half games. He was the only player in the League to average 19.5 minutes per game at even strength, 3.0 on the power play, and 2.5 shorthanded (and Cale Makar in 2022-23 is the only other skater to hit all those marks in a season since before the Caps’ Cup). And John Carlson was at his best when the Caps needed him most, posting the highest average (and total) GameScore on the team in April, including the playoffs:

Carlson topped 29 minutes played in each of Games 81 and 82, a mark he hit 14 times during the regular season (and twice more in the playoffs), five more than any other player in the League.

Carlson also hit some big milestones this past season, including playing in his 1,000th game (most by a Capitals defenseman, after having passed Calle Johansson at 984 a month earlier), registering his 500th assist, and taking over the franchise lead in career goals by a defenseman (151). Carlson is the Capitals’ franchise leader in games played (1,009), goals (151), assists (523), points (674), game-winning goals (32) and power-play points (250) among defensemen. It’s pretty safe to say that no one will be wearing #74 for the Caps after Carlson takes it off for the last time.

The bottom line is that you simply can’t replace a guy like John Carlson. Given the way in which the 2022-23 season went to hell when he went down for three months and how he almost single-handedly willed the Caps to the playoffs this time around, it’s pretty clear that John Carlson is and has been the team’s most important skater for a while now, and it seems like that realization has become more prevalent recently.

The Bad: The Caps’ special teams this season were, in aggregate, mediocre, finishing 18th in power-play efficiency and 19th on the penalty kill over the course of the regular season and then struggling massively in the playoffs. While Carlson obviously isn’t responsible for schemes and personnel decisions, he is essentially the power play quarterback (especially now with Nick Backstrom no longer running the show from the half-boards) and the team leader in shorthanded ice time. On the former, it’s probably unfair to single out Carlson for the power-plays shortcomings – chalk it up to a slow start, a low team shooting percentage, and a lack of adequate personnel/plan to enter the zone in possession (which isn’t to absolve him of all of the unit’s problems, of course, but the Caps’ expected goal rate at five-on-four with Carlson on the ice was really quite good, and he slotted between Quinn Hughes and Victor Hedman there). On the latter, among the 113 NHL defenders who played more than 100 minutes at four-on-five, Carlson had the 14th-highest expected goals-against rate (that teammate Nick Jensen ranked 9th may well point to a systematic problem there) and 20th-highest actual goals-against rate. With the disclaimer that he was facing a lot of PP1’s in these minutes, the Caps’ penalty kill with and without Carlson on the ice is a pretty staggering visual:

That’s a lot of excess offense coming from places that right-defense patrols, but your mileage may vary on just how culpable any one player is on a unit like this. Of course, John Carlson isn’t exactly known as a shutdown defender, so this (and other areas of his 2023-24 season, as the charts above show) sorta jibes with his whole oeuvre. There are a lot of miles on those tires, and as Carlson continues through his mid-30s, it’s unlikely that his defensive game is going to be getting any better.

The Video:

The Discussion: Here’s a fun one – where does John Carlson rank all-time among Capitals defensemen? Back to the here-and-now, can he replicate his 2023-24 season in 2024-25? Who is his ideal D partner (and is he even on the roster)? And finally, what would it take for you to give Carlson a 10 next season?

The Vote: Rate John Carlson below on a scale of 1-10 (10 being the best) based on his performance relative to his potential and your expectations for the season – so if he had the best year you could have imagined him having, give him a 10; if he more or less played as you expected he would, give him a 5 or a 6; if he had the worst year you could have imagined him having, give him a 1.