At about the two-thirds mark of the season, as teams are on break for the 4 Nations Face-Off, the Washington Capitals sit second in the league in points and first in points percentage. It’s a very good place to be, obviously. But there’s even better news: as the grueling 82-game regular season winds down and the grinding playoffs begin, the Caps will be well positioned – better, arguably, than many of the other teams. The reason? Rest.
That’s not just because none of the Caps were selected for the tournament; it’s actually because of how, all season, the Capitals sneakily been resting everyone.
What does that mean? Let’s start with looking at how the team’s time on ice breaks down for players, both overall and per game. First, the forwards (minimum 400 minutes played).
Pierre-Luc Dubois is the Caps’ ice time leader at five on five, with 763 minutes played…a total which checks in at 61st among all forwards. In fact, the Caps have only five players in the top 200 forwards in ice time: Dubois, Aliaksei Protas (65th), Connor McMichael (82nd), Dylan Strome (85th), and Tom Wilson (88th).
It looks even better when you switch the five-on-five time to time on ice per game, where the first Cap to show up on the list is, again, Dubois – this time at 83rd, clocking in at 13:52 per game.
Let’s stick with the forwards but switch to time on ice in all situations. Tom Wilson is the first Cap to show up on the list at #48; the second Cap on the list, Strome, doesn’t show up until 83rd. Again, average time per game shows an even bigger drop, with Wilson again the first Cap on the list at 57th.
The chart below shows the top 10 teams, besides the Caps, and their forwards and how many there are before the first Cap is even listed:
Outside of Dallas, every other contender has at least two players playing more time before the Caps even have one. Carolina is the only team on the list that has less with zero, as they are doing a good job of resting or cycling their players at five on five. When you look at total time in all situations, it gets closer, but when you switch it to all situations per game, which is arguably the most important stat here because it shows how much a player is playing per game, the Caps forwards really separate from the rest besides Dallas and New Jersey.
But there is another layer to all of this. Did you notice that the player who plays the most per game for the Caps is Tom Wilson (18:51)? We all love Wilson, but he isn’t a star like MacKinnon (23:03), Kaprisov (22:24), McDavid (22:11), Rantanen (22:11), Kucherov (21:47), Draisaitl (21:44), Marner (21:32), Eichel (21:05), Hughes (20:54), Matthews (20:31), etc. While other teams are running their stars every night, the Caps most used player is Tom Wilson. Keep that in mind.
Now let’s check out the defensemen.
Starting with five-on-five time, the first Cap on the list is Rasmus Sandin, ranked 56th. Switch to 5v5 per game, the first Cap on the list isn’t until 89, and that’s Jakob Chychrun.
Now for ice time in all situations for defensemen. This is the first time the Caps actually have someone high on the list, and unsurprisingly, that’s John Carlson at 14th. After him, we don’t see another Capital until Sandin at 81st. Swap to all situations time per game, Carlson moves down to 20th, then Chychrun at 72nd, then Matt Roy at 108th.
This chart below has the same mandates as the one above but for blueliners…although this time there’s a little cheating, as this isn’t the number of players until the Caps first player but their second. There’s a reason, and we’ll get to that in a sec – and if that doesn’t fly for you, just lower each number by one and it’s still quite impressive.
This is where the Caps really stand out, their time with their defensemen. The top four ranked teams here are relying on their top four to carry the ice time load, playing 3-4 players for more time than the Caps’ second most used defensemen. Only Minnesota and New Jersey are close to the Caps in resting their players.
Let’s not forgot maybe the most important point in all of this: the goalies. Logan Thompson has only played 31 games this season, which is 25th (!!!) in the league. Yes, arguably the best goalie in the league (after Connor Hellebuyck, of course), has played fewer games than 24 other goalies. This is the Caps secret weapon. Look at the the top 10 teams below and how they utilize their goalies.
Only Toronto has played their starting goalie less (because he was injured); everyone else has played their goalies at least three more games up to this point, some as many as 12 more games.
Hellebuyck has easily been the best goalie over the last two seasons before this one, and ended up playing 64 games in 2022-23 and 60 games in 2023-24. Once the playoffs rolled around, well…he dropped off, just a tad. In those two playoff runs, he won just two games out of 10 and posted an .875 sv% and -9.8 GSAA. He’s on pace to play 63 games this season.
Now, hockey is a team sport and winning doesn’t solely come down to the goalie, but it’s hard to see the best goalie in the league the two previous seasons play so much then get rocked in the playoffs and not think about resting him more. Logan Thompson is on pace to play just 46 games this season, the same exact as last season, where he went into the playoffs and posted a .921sv% and +2.3GSAA, winning two games out of four.
So from the goalies on up, the Caps are doing a great job of making sure they’re not taxing their top players, especially when compared to the rest of the league’s best teams – and this is just 56 games through the season. The only outlier on the team is Carlson, and maybe Wilson. If the Caps can rest them a bit more, especially Carlson, then they’d be in very good shape heading into the playoffs.
The Caps have one of the easiest schedules to end the season (but so do a lot of top teams – which makes sense, since as a top team, basically every opponent is “weaker” for this kind of stat), so as long they don’t implode they can continue this strategy of resting their players and the numbers could look even better by the end of the regular season.
None of this is to say that every team will be tired and the Caps will just run over them. Of course that won’t happen. NHL players are elite athletes and are in great shape, and racking up some extra minutes during the regular season won’t necessarily drain the tank by the time the postseason rolls around.
But in the playoffs, where every little thing matters, the difference of being able to stay on the ice for a little longer or have an extra jump in your step to get to a puck or your goalie going into double overtime and not being as gassed as the other goalie can pay dividends. When those little extra things are needed, the Caps have set themselves up quite nicely.