Opponents: Maple Leafs (4-3 OTL), Avalanche (5-2 W), Golden Knights (5-2 W), Utah (6-2 W)
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’re looking at how the team has done in their games between November 11 and November 18 (extending to include Monday’s game in Utah because of the weird schedule this week).
Hot Front

The top line. This trio continues to be so, so dominant, combining for nine goals and 18 points over their last four games and largely controlling possession when they’re on the ice. So far this season they’re outscoring teams 16-5 at even strength, too, so they’re not even a defensive liability. Now, what happens to the top line without Alex Ovechkin (who is officially out week-to-week with a lower-leg injury)…that remains to be seen.
Offense from the defense. Last season, the Capitals’ entire blueline corps combined for 20 goals and 135 points in 82 games (roughly half of which was provided by John Carlson) – that’s about 1.65 points per game, which was the third-lowest rate of scoring from the defense in the league last season, beating out only San Jose (1.32 pts/gm) and Chicago (1.27). This year, things look very different, with the defense combining for 50 points so far, or about 2.77 points per game; that would have ranked second last season. And while Carlson is still leading the way, the rest of the blueline is keeping up, a trend that continued this week. All six of the defensemen who dressed this week registered at least a point; everyone except for Martin Fehervary had at least two.
Penalty kill. Aside from a weirdly undisciplined outing against Utah last night, when they were shorthanded seven (!) times, the Caps have been pretty good at keeping penalties to a minimum. And when they do get nabbed, they’re pretty good at killing them off, as was the case this week when they kept some pretty potent power-play units off the board in 10 of their 11 times shorthanded – including all seven (!!!) penalties taken in Utah.
Power play. No, but for real this time! The much-maligned power play seems to be coming back to life and taking advantage of what have really been limited opportunities in this most recent stretch. Over the last week, the Caps have had just seven chances with the extra man and scored on a whopping three of them, one in each of their games except Toronto (a game in which the Leafs only took one penalty). Definitely going to be another area to keep an eye on with the captain out of commission, as he scored two of the three PPGs this week and has half of the team’s eight power-play goals scored this season. Can they stay hot without him in his office?
The Goalies. They haven’t been perfect (and thankfully the Caps haven’t needed them to be) but this was a good week overall for the team’s tandem of Logan Thompson and Charlie Lindgren. The duo turned aside 111 of the 121 shots they faced for a combined save percentage of .917, and held opponents to just two goals in three of the four games this week. We’ll take it for sure.
Cold Snap

Puck possession. This is one of those areas where small sample and contextual warnings certainly apply, because just looking at the underlying numbers, the Caps got pretty beat up in possession stats this week – all four games under 50% in even-strength CF%, FF%, even xGF%, outshot and outchanced, etc. For our purposes here, that’s pretty cold. It should be noted, however, that in all of those games the team held a lead of at least two goals for a significant portion of that game (and in three of the four games, expanded on that lead and carried it to the final horn) – so score effects are a real thing that kind of undermined what have been pretty great underlying stats overall thus far this season.
Tom Wilson. His linemates have continued to produce at a fairly good clip, with Connor McMichael putting up two goals and three points this week and Pierre-Luc Dubois adding four assists, but big #43 has gone quiet after his hot start to the season. Just a single assist and a bunch of penalty minutes (all from the win in Utah, snapping a streak of eight games without a penalty) to his name this week. He’s still getting his chances, and his line’s numbers look good overall, so maybe this is just the universe evening things out after his 82-goal pace that opened the campaign.
Holding a lead against Toronto. It was such a bad collapse that it rendered their usually chatty coach almost speechless with anger (although the few words he did utter were…choice).