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 4 of the 2023-24 season:
- Record: 2-0-1
- Goals For: 11
- Goals Against: 7
- PK: 100% (6-for-6)
- PP: 0% (0-for-7)
Trending Up:
- Hunter Shepard. Literally “up” this week (from Hershey), Shepard made the most of his second NHL start by stopping 36 of the 37 shots he faced after getting the nod to start the back half of back-to-backs on the road against a rested Isles team. Shepard handled all 15 high- and medium-danger shots he saw, including seven rebound shots, and the one goal he did allow was the result of the type of miscommunication a non-regular goalie and his new teammates might (and in this case did) have. He’ll head back to Hershey when Darcy Kuemper is ready to go again [Ed. Note: a thing which has apparently now happened], but it’s good to know the Caps’ #3 (now 2-0-0 and thus a trend, pedants) is a decent play.
- Nicolas Aube-Kubel. Sticking with another AHL call-up who helped bury a New York-area Metro foe on the road, NAK made an immediate impact, opening the scoring midway through the first period on Friday night and adding an assist 15 seconds later. The 27-year-old winger picked up the primary helper on Nic Dowd’s game-winner one night later and posted the team’s highest 5v5 expected goals-for percentage for the week (56.4%) despite comically unfavorable deployment. When the Caps next send a forward back to Hershey, there’s an awfully good chance it won’t be Aube-Kubel.
- Anthony Mantha. We haven’t been able to put Mantha on this side of the ledger enough over the past
year(s)month, but the big rig was a force against the Panthers on Wednesday night, scoring his second and third goals of the campaign and giving Caps fans glimpses of his all-too-elusive talent before leaving the game (and missing the next two) after getting hit in the head with an Evgeny Kuznetsov shot gone awry. It was actually Mantha’s third-straight really strong game since the calendar flipped to November, a month in which he’s now posted an NHL-best (yes, League-wide, minimum 35 minutes) on-ice xGF percentage of 77.0. Hopefully he can get back in the lineup soon and pick up where he left off.
Trending Down:
- T.J. Oshie. It’s almost unfathomable that here we are in mid-November and T.J. Oshie hasn’t scored a goal yet, despite playing 13 games and logging 228 minutes, 45 of which have come in the power-play spot that made Troy Brouwer millions of dollars. The zero is bad luck, of course (and with one assist, it’s not as if he’s showing up elsewhere on the score sheet), and the process says he should be scoring, but clocking just two shots last week (none in nine-plus minutes on what has been an utterly impotent power play) isn’t likely to break that goose egg. No one expects 2016-17 Oshie production in 2023, but it’d be nice to not be getting 2036-37 Oshie production.
- John Carlson. The Caps’ main minute muncher has been a constant on a blueline that hasn’t had many – his 26:13 of ice time per night is second in the League, just three seconds behind fellow 2008 first-round pick Drew Doughty – but at some point, the quarterback of the League’s lowest-scoring power play needs to be called out here and, well, this is that point. Similar to the Oshie note, the underlying numbers say the power play should be good. Like, really good. But it hasn’t been, and throw in a week of some mediocre-at-best surface-level and deeper metrics for Carlson and he winds up here.
- Matthew Phillips. If Phillips isn’t scoring or at least creating chances, he’s not going to stick around much longer. He did have a big assist on Saturday night, but that was his first point in nine games after a hot start to the season, and he has failed to register a shot attempt (much less one on goal) in six of his last eight games, and the Caps were out-chanced 16-5 with Phillips on the ice this week (10-3 on high-danger chances). For a guy who doesn’t play much special teams, weeks like this (especially with Nic Dowd returning and Aube-Kubel playing well on recall) make it hard to stick around.
Lowlight of the Week
Wednesday’s overtime was over in a blink of an eye, and Coach wasn’t shy telling everyone why…
Highlight of the Week
This was pretty cool (but ugly goals are still cooler than pretty carnival tricks in the neutral zone):
another angle pic.twitter.com/g5L7xTPXhn
— Capitals Replays (@capsreplays) November 11, 2023