From Beauvillier to Wilson, we’re taking a look at and grading the 2024-25 season for every player who laced ‘em up for the Washington Capitals for a significant number of games during the campaign, with an eye towards 2025-24. Next up, Dylan Strome.
The Bio:
17 | Center | Shoots: Left
Height: 6’3” | Weight: 196 | Born: March 7, 1997
Birthplace: Mississauga, ONT | Acquired: Signed as a free agent on July 14, 2022
Cap Hit: $5,000,000 | Signed Through: 2027-28 | Expiry Status: Unrestricted Free Agent
The Scouting Report (via EP)
The Stats:
The Charts:
The Key Stat: Strome finished the 2024-25 season with a points-per-game rate of 1.00, the first time in his career in which he’s averaged at least a point per game. Strome was one of just 35 NHLers to hit that rate (min. 41 GP) and one of just two Caps, joining Alex Ovechkin (1.12).
The Good: For the third consecutive season, Strome set new career highs in goals, assists, and points, surpassing his assist total by 13 and his points by 15 while leading the Caps in scoring overall. He also fell just one goal short of his first 30-goal campaign (thank you very much, Mike Sullivan), scored nine power-play goals, and finished tied for eighth in power-play points with 34 – for context, that put him ahead of extra-man powerhouses like Leon Draisaitl, Connor McDavid, Mitch Marner, Sam Reinhart…you get the idea. Once the playoffs rolled around, Strome kept his offense clicking, leading the Caps with 11 points – nine of them assists – and five power-play points through the team’s 10 games.
The biggest “good” of all for Strome, though, was also probably the highlight of the season, as he helped set up Alex Ovechkin’s record-breaking tally – a fitting statistic for the team’s resident stat nerd.
The Bad: It’s a good thing Strome actually managed to provide some offense, because the rest of his stats, well…they weren’t so pretty. He, like a lot of his teammates, benefited from an extremely efficient shooting percentage while the underlying numbers would suggest he wasn’t doing such a great job at generating offense at all. In fact, Strome’s xGF% Rel was the fifth-worst on the team; the only players behind him were Alex Ovechkin (more on that in a second), Dylan McIlrath (who played 17 games), Hendrix Lapierre (jettisoned to the AHL after 27 games) and Jakub Vrana (placed on waivers after 26). That’s not exactly the type of company you want your 1C to be keeping.
A lot of that, unfortunately, has to do with who was flanking him for a good portion of the season on that top line, and that would be that Ovechkin guy. As we talked about last week, Ovechkin had something of a tendency to drag down his linemates, and Strome was not immune to those effects – regardless of how much the duo actually managed to score.
The Video: Stromer gets his third-career hat trick, and his first as a Capital…
The Discussion: Do you think Strome can continue to improve on his offensive numbers from last season? Is there a better fit for Strome with the current roster or is centering Ovechkin’s line the best option (for now)? What do you think Strome’s ceiling is?
The Vote: Rate Dylan Strome 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.
