Capitals’ John Carlson is looking as good as ever

Washington Capitals defenseman John Carlson has racked up two goals and seven points in eight games to start the year, a big reason for the Caps’ early season success.

Today on Daily Faceoff LIVE, Frank Seravalli and Tyler Yaremchuk talk about Carlson’s impact, his career and where the Capitals are at right now.

Tyler Yaremchuk: How about John Carlson? Like, again, a lot of the attention went to Rasmus Sandin and they added Jakob Chychrun and Matt Roy, who I know, as you said, is banged up right now. But, John Carlson is eating 20, north of 26 minutes a night. That is six more minutes a game than any other player on the Capitals. He is one of three defensemen in the NHL to be averaging more than 26 minutes a night, and he’s 34 years old. He is no spring chicken anymore, Frank. But he is, again, proving or, I guess, reminding us of just how good he is.

Frank Seravalli: He’s at a point per game basically, seven points in eight games so far. I mean, look at his career numbers, this isn’t crazy out of the norm. He went 80 games one year, averaging 25:04 minutes. Another year, 24:38 minutes. So he’s being asked to do a little bit more now with Matt Roy out. But this is someone who’s been in the top five in Norris voting twice in his career. The year the Caps struggled, was when they didn’t have him in 2022-23. It’s not really a coincidence to me that the Caps at that exact point in time, had their worst season pretty much of the Alex Ovechkin era.

Frank Seravalli: It looked like this is a team with 80 points under Peter Laviolette. It looked like a team that was going in the wrong direction, but they’ve rebooted with some strong drafting. They’ve made some important key decisions on trades and signings, with the Chychrun one really standing out. They’ve e shuffled their goaltending a bit, I think this team is really well-positioned. They’re going to have lots of cap space and flexibility moving forward to do some things that they need.