While the Washington Capitals are well on their way to capturing the Metropolitan Division title and the Eastern Conference title, and find themselves in the running for the Presidents’ Trophy, their season has not been without stumbles. And with just seven games remaining, some concerns have cropped up as the team heads into the postseason. Let’s talk about ’em.
Last week, we looked at the goaltending concerns…now let’s shift to the other end of the ice and the team’s work with the extra man.
The Caps’ power play has always relied pretty heavily on Alex Ovechkin, built around either getting him free to take his trademark shot from his office or on other teams covering him so tightly that they free up his talented teammates to score.
That system has actually worked pretty well over the years, at least when looking at it In the almost two decades since Ovechkin’s debut, they’ve scored a total of 1,118 goals on 5,378 opportunities for an effectiveness rate of 20.8% – tied with Tampa for best in the league over that span, despite ranking 19th in power-play opportunities per game.
This season, however – and particularly over the last month or so – that has shifted from reliance to pure deference, with guys force-feeding Ovechkin the puck at near-comical rates in an attempt to get the big man to the big goal total.
To be fair, it has worked, particularly during this last stretch as Ovechkin closed in on 895. Four of his last five goals, including the goal that set the new record, were scored on the power play. Problem is, he’s also scored four of the last six power-play goals for the team as a whole, the exceptions being a Pierre-Luc Dubois tally in the loss to Buffalo and a goal credited to Dylan Strome but actually scored by a Chicago defender on his own net.
Before PLD’s goal against the Sabres and the little outburst that kicked off the final leg of the chase, the Caps had gone 10 games without a power-play goal. It’s something they’ve done throughout the season, going cold for a stretch before finding a little bit of a rhythm and rattling off goals in the next run of games. They had a similar drought very early in the campaign, their second-longest until that 10-game slump, going six games in October without a power-play tally before finally snapping out of it.
And unfortunately, when the power play isn’t clicking, some of the issues stem from one person – the man who is, rightfully, being celebrated for scoring so many goals and who has provided so much of the Caps’ offense on and off the power play over the years.
Here’s Bailey Johnson on the troubles at the end of March:
Ovechkin is still capable of scoring on his trademark one-timer from the left circle, but it’s not as automatic as it once was. His diminishing speed at 39 affects his ability to win pucks back after a missed shot or a save.
Ovechkin’s skating also affects how the Capitals plan their zone entries on the power play, because he rarely carries the puck across the blue line and isn’t typically a passing option for whoever the puck carrier is. The penalty killers are aware of that, enabling them to turn a five-on-four advantage for Washington essentially into a four-on-four situation in the moments when Ovechkin isn’t involved.
Washington Post, 3/28/25
It’s strange to say that Alex Ovechkin, CEO of the left faceoff circle, could be a hindrance to the team’s power play, but there was a definite shift in effectiveness during the 16 games he missed at the end of 2024. In those 16 games, the Caps scored 13 times on just 47 opportunities, an effectiveness rate of 27.7%; six different players scored a power-play goal, led by Tom Wilson’s four.
That said, it’s unfair and perhaps a bit too simplistic to lay the blame solely at #8’s feet. This season they rank 24th in xGF%, 30th in SCF%, and 31st in HDGF% (i.e. goals that generally require traffic in front of the net) with the extra man, and some of those numbers actually got worse without Ovechkin in the lineup. When the power play has struggled, it’s struggled hard, and it’s both noticeable and painful to watch.
The bright side is that both their lengthy power-play drought and the Gr8 Chase are over, the latter perhaps being the biggest factor in how the rest of the season plays out in many areas – not the least of which is the power play.
Of course his teammates will still look to set up Ovechkin on occasion…he is still Alex damn Ovechkin, after all, and no amount of “but the zone entries!!” panic can outweigh the reality of having the best goal-scorer and best power-play goal-scorer in history on the ice. But there will no longer be this urgency of trying to get every puck to him, make every play go through him, and if they do get the puck to him, other teams won’t be defending him as tightly as they attempted to do in that last handful of games. The hope is that will loosen things up all around and let them really find their rhythm, get bodies to the net, and create havoc – and goals.
As we noted the other day when talking about the penalty kill, penalties and special teams seem to matter so much more in the playoffs because a) they’re usually more sporadic and b) everything matters so much more in the playoffs. When given an advantage, you have to take it, and that means being lethal on the power play.
The Caps are capable of being lethal on the power play. We’ve seen it at times this season, just…not so much lately. But we’ll file this one under moderate concern, because they do seem to be coming out of that slump and will (hopefully) find wrinkles to their work with the extra man that amounts to more than just “get the puck to O”.