2022-23 NHL team preview: Washington Capitals

LAST SEASON

“The Washington Capitals were competitive in the crowded Metropolitan Division. Alex Ovechkin’s ageless play and meteoric climb up the all-time goals list stole most of the headlines. The Caps iced one of the oldest teams in the NHL and bombed out early in the Stanley Cup playoffs.”

Can you tell which season I’m referring to?

It could be any of the four since the Caps won their first and only Stanley Cup in 2017-18. Since then, their big, gritty, veteran-laden squad has finished with a points percentage between .610 and .688 and lost in Round 1 of the Stanley Cup playoffs four times.

Last season fit the carbon copy: the Caps were reasonably competitive for most of the season. At 36 years old, Ovechkin tied an NHL record with his ninth 50-goal season and leapt from 730 to 780 goals, passing Marcel Dionne (731) Brett Hull (741) and Jaromir Jagr (766) to reach third on the all-time leaderboard behind only Wayne Gretzky (894) and Gordie Howe (801). Washington’s aging squad made the postseason comfortably as the second wildcard seed and gave the Presidents’ Trophy-winning Panthers a minor scare before losing the first-round matchup in six games.

So what has changed entering 2022-23? As currently constructed, the Capitals are the league’s oldest team, with an average age of 29.92, according to Elite Prospects. Can we expect anything more than another season of middling contention and exciting Ovechkin theatrics? Will Washington’s injuries to a few key top-six forwards make the playoffs a more difficult mountain to summit this time?

KEY ADDITIONS & DEPARTURES

Additions
Darcy Kuemper, G
Dylan Strome, C
Connor Brown, RW
Gabriel Carlsson, D
Charlie Lindgren, G
Erik Gustafsson, D
Henrik Borgstrom, C

Departures
Ilya Samsonov, G (Tor)
Vitek Vanecek, G (NJ)
Justin Schultz, D (Sea)
Michal Kempny, D (Sea)
Brian Pinho, C (NJ)

OFFENSE

No team led by Ovechkin and Evgeny Kuznetsov up front and John Carlson on defense is going to be bad offensively. The Capitals finished 10^th in goals per game last season. They’ve ranked as a top-10 offense 12 times in Ovechkin’s 17-season career including 10 consecutive seasons.

In 5-on-5 play, however, the Capitals graded out close to league average and were rescued by the seventh-best shooting percentage in the league, a testament to their skill. But did the power play, known for setting up Ovechkin for his one-timer at the half boards, finally become predictable? Washington clicked at just 18.8 percent in 2021-22, ranking 23^rd in the NHL. It didn’t help that typical top-six stalwarts Nicklas Backstrom, T.J. Oshie and Anthony Mantha missed significant chunks of time due to injury. Ovechkin had to do a lot of the scoring work himself.

Will that be the case again this season? A torn ACL will keep first-line right winger Tom Wilson out for the few couple months of 2022-23. His recovery is ahead of schedule but, given his violent style, it may take half a season before he’s himself again. Franchise legend and probable future Hall of Famer Backstrom is slowly working his way back from hip resurfacing surgery and won’t be ready for the start of the season, either. General manager Brian MacLellan is betting on Connor Brown and Dylan Strome to keep the Caps’ offense lively as direct replacements for Wilson and Backstrom.

DEFENSE

The Capitals were a slightly above average team at preventing shots and chances last season and sat in the top half of the NHL in expected goals against per 60 minutes. Dmitry Orlov and Nick Jensen are the closest thing they have to a shutdown pair. Among 60 NHL duos that spent at least 500 minutes together at 5-on-5 last season, they held the 11^th-best expected goals against per 60. Carlson is the most impactful blueliner on the team because he’s such a dominant offensive force, sometimes overshadowed league-wide because we’re spoiled with generationally great players like Cale Makar and Victor Hedman. But it was high-event hockey with Carlson on the ice last year because he was typically dragging around rookie Martin Fehervary, who was pretty porous defensively.

On the whole: the Caps are decent defensively but not elite, and their top six forwards typically skew more to the offensive side of the puck. Their penalty kill was an asset last season, 12^th-best in the league, and returns most of their key shorthanded contributors, from center Nic Dowd to defenseman Trevor van Riemsdyk.

GOALTENDING

And…reset. Capitals GM Brian MacLellan decided he’d seen enough of former top prospect Ilya Samsonov and tandem mate Vitek Vanecek and jettisoned them both, declining to give Samsonov a qualifying offer and dealing Vanecek to the New Jersey Devils. Their replacements: Darcy Kuemper and Charlie Lindgren.

Kuemper, 32, comes with serious juice, fresh off backstopping the Colorado Avalanche to the Stanley Cup. One could argue the Avs won the Cup more in spite of Kuemper’s play than because of it, as he was mostly mediocre during the 2022 postseason, but it’s possible he just never got into a rhythm following a scary eye injury in Round 1 against the Nashville Predators. If we look at the larger sample size, the 2021-22 regular season, Kuemper was mostly outstanding, posting a .921 save percentage and five shutouts across 57 starts. The elite team in front of him make his workload manageable, but he was superb nonetheless. The only regular starters who saved more goals above average per 60 at 5-on-5 were Ilya Sorokin, Igor Shesterkin and Thatcher Demko.

So as long as the Capitals get the version of Kuemper we saw for most of last season and for much of his career to date, they’ve indeed scored an upgrade in net. Lindgren, 28, landed a somewhat surprising three-year commitment at a $1.1 million AAV to back up Kuemper. Lindgren has started just 28 NHL games in six seasons. He was outstanding in limited duty last year, however, going 5-0-0 with a 1.22 goals-against average and .958 SV% at the NHL level with the St. Louis Blues and excelling in AHL Springfield to boot. The Capitals believe he’s ready to stick in the NHL permanently as a No. 2 netminder.

COACHING

Peter Laviolette’s teams are typically steady, competitive, aggressive and offense-oriented. He has made the playoffs (or at least the play-ins in 2020) eight consecutive seasons. He won a Stanley Cup with the Carolina Hurricanes in 2005-06 and took the 2016-17 Nashville Predators to the Final. With the Caps? He was more of a reactionary stopgap hire, intended to maintain the team’s win-now standing, after the Caps moved on from Todd Reirden. In two seasons behind the Capitals bench, Laviolette has guided them to a .616 points percentage, but they haven’t broken through to the second round.

Laviolette’s seat feels lukewarm at most, especially because he’s had to navigate plenty of untimely injuries and disappointing goaltending, but if Washington hits a wall early this spring again, MacLellan could consider a new voice.

ROOKIES

Connor McMichael’s rookie year is in the books, and he hopes to make strides this season to help fill Backstrom’s shoes as a playmaking center, sharing that responsibility with Strome. The freshman to watch this season if he can make the team? Feisty Hendrix Lapierre, who has some of the most dynamic hands of any prospect in the game, blessed with the ability to make high-skill plays at top speed. He profiles as a future leader in the organization. Injuries have slowed his development, but he has game-breaking ability. The Capitals badly need their next generation of prospects to start making meaningful contributions.

BURNING QUESTIONS

1. Can Washington weather the injury storm? With all due respect to Brown and Strome, they are not Wilson and Backstrom. Can Washington remain competitive over the first couple months of the season awaiting their returns from injury? Wilson’s timeline is clearer, but Backstrom’s recovery is unpredictable. If Washington remains afloat in the Metro by the time it gets them back, this team suddenly becomes quite deep at forward.

2. Does the Ovechkin goal chase overshadow the team goals? Ovechkin is 22 goals away from surpassing Howe for No. 2 all-time and still needs at least two more seasons of elite production if he wants to catch Gretzky. In the past four seasons, Ovechin averages 4:36 of power play time per game. Second in the NHL is 4:01 over that span. The Capitals are clearly committed to feeding No. 8. They obviously still care about winning, but there’s no denying the goals record is special – rarer than a championship.

3. Will the next generation step up? The Capitals championship core was built from their first-round draft selections: Ovechkin, Backstrom, Carlson, Kuznetsov, Wilson and so on. Being so consistently competitive during the Ovechkin years, however, has hampered the team’s ability to build a strong prospect pipeline. Lapierre is the lone Washington pick from the past three drafts to play in the NHL so far and he only has six games to his credit. The NHL’s oldest team desperately needs a new wave to back up its greybeards.

PREDICTION

Washington looks stronger in net than it did a year ago, and it still has enough high-octane offensive players to stay competitive most nights. But last year’s team claimed the final wildcard spot, remember. The Caps are no longer bullies in the Eastern Conference, and their early-season injury concerns might leave them battling down to the season’s final week to secure a postseason berth.

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