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.
Note: 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.
Here is how things went for the Washington Capitals in Week 3 of the 2023-24 season:
- Record: 1-0-1
- Goals For: 2
- Goals Against: 4
- PP: 0% (0-for-6)
- PK: 100% (6-for-6)
Trending Up:
- Charlie Lindgren. Playing his first game since opening night, the Caps’ nominal #2 goalie stopped 34 of the 35 shots he faced, including seven on the power-play and nine of ten “high danger” chances. The Jackets’ expected goal total for the game was up over four, so with the Caps only potting two tallies of their own, it’s pretty clear who was most responsible for that dub. But when you rock a ‘stache like that and Movember rolls around, this kind of performance is to be expected.
- Rasmus Sandin. Had his best game of the season on Saturday night logging over 24 minutes as a result of Trevor van Riemsdyk’s early injury. Sandin was only credited with one assist (his first of the season), but really could’ve been awarded one on the Caps’ first goal after his rush created the chance that Tom Wilson finished. This is the kind of game that has Caps fans (and management) high on the 23-year-old Swedish blueliner’s future.
- Connor McMichael. The Caps’ 2019 first-round pick is playing his natural position (center) and looking, well, natural at both ends of the ice. In the week’s two games (since Nicklas Backstrom’s announcement thrust him back into that pivot spot), McMichael failed to register a point, but had some pretty eye-catching underlying numbers, including an 87.1% expected goals-for at five-on-five thanks in large part to a 7-1 high-danger chance advantage and the team’s second-best individual expected goal total. Could Connor McMichael be ready to make The Leap?
Trending Down:
- Dylan Strome. The Caps’ top pivot didn’t register a point this week and, by the all-inclusive “GameScore” stat, was the Caps’ worst skater on Thursday night and then again on Saturday. Is that bad? That seems bad. On the plus side, those were the first two negative GameScores Strome has registered this year and he’s the team leader in the metric, so no need to worry.
- Alex Ovechkin. Any week (or game or period or shift) when Ovechkin doesn’t score is inherently disappointing – that’s just where he’s set the bar over the past nearly two decades. But Ovi had two unimpressive outings (despite leading the team in individual expected goals, he finished right ahead of Strome in GameScore in both games) and now has his second four-game goal-less streak of the season. Like the rest of the team, he’s getting chances and they’re just not going, a trend that is almost certain to turn around sooner than later… right?
- Darcy Kuemper. That it took Kuemper more than 25 minutes to make his first save on Thursday night is both a testament to a solid defensive effort in front of him and an indictment of a start that was somehow uglier than the stat line. Kuemper ended up stopping 18 of the 21 shots he faced for a perfectly “meh” night at the office in aggregate, but if this week proved anything, it’s that the Caps aren’t going to win a ton of games without getting good goaltending – it ain’t 2009. For Kuemper, it was another “all or nothing” outing (the latter this time, obviously), as he has yet to have a game with a save percentage between .894 and .949 this season (three times above, four times below).
Lowlight of the Week
It doesn’t get much lower than how we all felt when we saw this…
Highlight of the Week
A good forecheck and some tic-tac-toe passing results in a Sonny Milano Revenge Goal: