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Capitals Temperature Check: Week 13

Taking a read on the Caps in their four games this week.

Jan 10, 2025; Washington, District of Columbia, USA; Washington Capitals center Ethen Frank (53) celebrates with teammates after recording his first NHL point, in his first NHL game, against the Montreal Canadiens in the third period at Capital One Arena. Mandatory Credit: Geoff Burke-Imagn Images

Throughout the season, we’ll check in on the Washington Capitals to see which players, positions, and/or systems are hot and who is, well, not. Today we’ll be assessing the team based on their games from January 6-12.

Opponents: Sabres (SOL 4-3); Canucks (OTW 2-1); Canadiens (OTL 3-2); Predators (W 4-1)

Hot Front

Extra time. Through their first 37 games, the Capitals only saw five games decided past regulation; they’ve now gone to overtime in four of their last six games, including three of the four this week. That’s going to happen more and more as we get later into the season, with teams scrapping for points, so…good practice going forward?

The Big Boy Line. Yup, these guys again. Aliaksei Protas, Pierre-Luc Dubois and Tom Wilson continued to keep things rolling, providing the bulk of the offense in a low-scoring week for the team overall and combining for six goals and nine points through the four games.

Ethen Frank. It took a long time for Frank to get his chance at a spot with the Capitals, but the 26-year-old has made the most of his opportunity since getting the call two games ago. His hustle to negate an icing followed up by a beautiful pass helped set up the game-tying goal against Montreal, and his first-career NHL goal the following night ended up being the game-winner. Hell of a start for Frank – keep it going, kid!

Power Play. The Caps’ power play was super efficient this week, as they only drew 10 penalties and scored on three of them. They were so efficient that on two of the three goals, they needed less than a minute to work – not bad for a power play unit that occasionally struggles to even get set up in the offensive zone, so we’ll take it.

Cold Snap

Offense. Some dropoff from the team’s early-season scoring rate is to be expected, between Alex Ovechkin’s injury and just the fact that their rate earlier in the season was somewhat unsustainable; they’ve gone from over four goals a game (tops in the league) to 3.63 goals/game (which is still good enough for second overall, but still). The more troubling fact is that they’re simply not generating offensive chances in the form of shots and shot attempts. They didn’t even crack 20 shots in three of their four games last week and were under 50% in xGF at evens in all four. Too much passing and second-guessing, not enough simplification of the game.

Connor McMichael. McMichael has struggled a bit since Coach Carbery started shuffling the lines, with just one goal and three assists in his last 11 games, and a single assist in his last four. As is the case with the team as a whole, some of this is probably a bit of regression; some of it is also linked to being on a line with Dylan Strome and Alex Ovechkin, both of whom have been struggling in their own right lately. Don’t expect any of those three to stay down for too long.

Penalty Kill. Some weeks, all of the special teams magic clicks at once, with both the power play and penalty killing units finding success…this was not one of those weeks. While their own power play continued to help keep the team afloat, other teams took advantage of the extra man against them, with three power-play goals given up in the four games for a PK of just under 77%.

Talking Points