Each Monday throughout the season, we’ll take a look at the previous week to see who is on the upswing and who stumbled, and reflect back on a highlight and lowlight from the week.
Disclaimer: If a player is listed as “trending up”, that does not mean they have been perfect; if they are “trending down”, it doesn’t mean they had the worst week ever. So don’t come for us. Please.
Here is how things went for the Washington Capitals in Week 12 and 13 of the 2023-24 season:
- Record: 3-3-0
- Goals For: 12
- Goals Against: 13
- PK: 94.4% (17-for-18)
- PP: 14.3% (2-for-14)
Trending Up:
- Max Pacioretty. It took him a couple of games to warm up, but Pacioretty seems to have found his stride with the Capitals, and is putting up points and getting scoring chances in exactly the way we all hoped he would when he signed with the team last summer. He scored four points in the team’s last six games, including his first goal in over a year, and has found a great fit on the team’s newest trio alongside T.J. Oshie and Dylan Strome (but more on those guys in a sec…). In fact, Pacioretty led the team in xGF% rel at five on five over the last two weeks, with Oshie and Strome right behind.
- T.J. Oshie. Apparently Oshie has been returning to Minnesota for whatever magical back treatment he gets there on a yearly basis – we just didn’t know about it. What we do know is that this time around, there’s an extra bounce in his step since his latest return, and it’s driving results. He rounded out a six-game stretch with six points, five of them goals, including his sixth-career hat trick against his former squad in front of a giddy Capital One Arena crowd. Alexa, play Country Roads forever.
- Dylan Strome. Look, this line was just fire since being cobbled together and you can’t leave any of these guys out when talking about the best of the last two weeks. Strome, like Pacioretty, continued to put up the offense, with four points (which, somewhat strangely for him, was mostly assists). He also led the team in even-strength CF%, and trailed only Pacioretty in five-on-five xGF% rel and HDCF% rel.
Trending Down:
- Tom Wilson. It’s pretty rare this season to see Wilson on this side of the ledger, but this most recent stretch of games hasn’t been his finest. Honestly, since having to don that fishbowl to protect his busted nose, he hasn’t quite been himself – whether the two are related or not is unknown to anyone but him, but everything’s just a little off. He had the sixth-lowest xGF% rel on the team, and took 16 minutes of penalties (12 of which were in Saturday night’s loss in St. Louis). We know he can do better.
- Hendrix Lapierre. It’s hard to be too hard on Lapierre, who has been in and out of the lineup and bounced around to fill in wherever the team needs him whenever he’s in the lineup – so finding some consistency to his game has been tricky. But just one point over the last two weeks (and just two points over his last 13 games overall, both assists) and some underlying numbers that aren’t pretty…we’d just like to see more from the kid.
- Evgeny Kuznetsov. Just….you know. Same old.
Lowlight of the Week(s)
The Caps have given up just three shorthanded goals this season, which puts them in the top-third of the league in that department…so this was unfun:
Highlight of the Week(s)
Oshbabe x3: