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Now that we’re about a quarter of the way into the 2024-25 season, it’s time to look at how the Capitals are playing and what the takeaways are.


Games played: 20

Record: 13-6-1

Standing: 3rd in the Metro, 3rd by points percentage

Goal leader: Alex Ovechkin (15)

Assist leader: Dylan Strome (22)

Mr. Clean: Martin Fehérváry (one penalty in 20 games at 20:09 TOI)


The big national media story this year involving the Washington Capitals is Alex Ovechkin, his all-out assault on Father Time, and his incredibly unfortunately-timed injury.  He’s only 26 goals away from tying Wayne Gretzky’s all-time goal scoring record (894) and 27 from owning it outright.  With his 13th goal of the season in game 17 vs. Vegas (a game where he also got his 11th and 12th), he became the oldest player to lead the NHL in goals, a lead he shared with two other players who are a decade younger and had played one more game to that point.  He later took the outright lead in goals for a time when he hit 15, also being the oldest player to be the first to that mark.  Within the team, he’s still on top in terms of shots on goal (63) and power play goals (4).  He had some really impressive hustle in his game too, racing down the ice on breakaways and making defensive plays that people wouldn’t have expected from him years ago, let alone after turning 39 and garnering a bit of a reputation for playing with his controller unplugged at times.

Ovechkin hasn’t looked his age much at all this season, which I think is mainly owed to the fact that he didn’t have any external factors bringing him down.  Last season was thought of by non-Caps fans as age catching up to him, but I think all the early-season slump was due to things like dealing with his father’s death in February 2023, likely injury buildup, and his quest to find the perfect stick to replace his trusty CCM Ribcor Trigger ASY stick.  He tried multiple sticks from different manufacturers all season, and expressed his disappointment with how companies won’t keep making athletes’ preferred equipment.  All of those issues started to fade after the All-Star break last season, and he started scoring goals at a familiar pace.  That doesn’t even take into account all the roster changes that went on during the season: the team added in players including Max Pacioretty, Joel Edmundson, and Ethan Bear; and lost or traded Nicklas Bäckström, Evgeny Kuznetsov, Anthony Mantha, and Edmundson.   He and the team are no stranger to turnover, and there was a good amount of it in this latest offseason, but when you add it on top of all the other issues plaguing him last year, it only could have served to negatively impact his production.  Now after he’s had a full offseason to rest, recover, settle on a stick, and experience the new system, he did what he should have been doing last season.  Old as hell or not, he’s still the greatest goal scorer in the history of the sport and he’s still showing us why.

At least he was, until a bad collision broke his fibula.  He’s only out four to six weeks, which means there’s a chance I won’t have anything to say about him when we look at the team around the halfway point of the season (game 41 is January 8 vs. the Canucks, or about seven weeks after the day he got hurt).  Whether he comes back where he left off or needs a few games to get back up to speed, I don’t think it’s even close to out of the question that he still manages to break Gretzky’s record this season.  If he misses exactly six weeks, his first chance to suit up would be on New Year’s Eve, and he would have 46 games to score 26 goals.  That’s a .565 goals-per-game pace, after he started this year on a pace of .833, and with a nice long break between games on 2/9 and 2/22 for the NHL 4 Nations Face-Off.  Even if he doesn’t do it this year, he’s still got all of next season to not only break the record but push it into the 900s.

The turnover mentioned a bit earlier was big for this season’s team and in an entirely good way.  The Caps got a lot younger and a lot better with the trades and free agent signings masterminded by President of Hockey Operations Brian MacLellan and new Senior Vice President and General Manager Chris Patrick.  There were great draft picks, improvement via subtraction with who was traded away, and some important AHL juggling, but the moves I want to highlight were the pre-season acquisitions: PL Dubois, Andrew Mangiapane, Logan Thompson, Matt Roy, Jakob Chychrun, Taylor Raddysh, Brandon Duhaime, and Jakub Vrána.  Six forwards, two defenders, one goaltender.  All have already made big impacts and proven that the moves made and money paid to get them were well worth it.

Pierre-Luc Dubois is probably the most interesting name on that list.  He’s a 26-year-old center who’s played for Columbus, Winnipeg, and LA before the Kings traded him to the Caps for goaltender Darcy Kuemper.  He’s only in year two of an eight-year, $68 million contract, which makes him currently the highest paid active player on the team (Ovechkin makes the most and Nicklas Bäckström would be second, but he won’t see the ice again).  He earned a reputation for quitting on his teams, not putting in effort, and not producing at a level that matched his renown and salary.  His response to all that was that he needs clear instruction and expectations and to know exactly where he stands on his team; he needs one-on-one coaching and confidence boosting from the players and coaches around him.  Well, Mr. Dubois, welcome to Washington.  I’ll talk more about head coach Spencer Carbery later on, but I don’t think there’s a better place in the NHL for a player with those requirements.  Carbery is honest (but not mean), fosters a great environment where everyone has clearly defined roles, and isn’t afraid to take guys aside and figure out what’s going wrong and how to fix it.  Through this first chunk of games, it’s been working.  Dubois has set up 11 goals for his teammates, two coming on power plays (more on that later too), and sent 31 good shots toward the net.  He’s blocked 18 shots, drawn more PIM than he’s taken, and thrown 22 hits.  I’d like to say he’s gotten goals as well, but it’s unfortunately just two so far, one being an empty-netter.  His expected goals sit at 6.5, and it really feels with the eye test like he should be a lot closer to that, but the puck luck has not been with him so far.  Bad bounces, good saves, anything you can imagine, it just isn’t working.  That sucks, but it’s also shown that he isn’t letting it get to him.  He hasn’t taken a single shift off, he hasn’t gotten less aggressive or stopped taking shots.  He knows his role and he’s doing it.  The goals will come in due time, and here’s hoping they pour in to a degree that makes up for what he should have already had.

Andrew Mangiapane is a 28-year-old left wing who comes to DC via the Calgary Flames, coming at a price of just a 2025 second-round pick.  So far he hasn’t made a gigantic impact on the scoresheet, but he’s been good.  The problem is that he hasn’t really been on a line that has any consistency.  This’ll apply to Jakub Vrána later on too, but Mangiapane has probably had the worst time of it with this.  He started the season on the top line with Ovechkin and Dylan Strome, and then that spot went to Aliaksei Protas while Mangiapane found himself on the third line with a rotating cast of Vrána, Sonny Milano, Hendrix Lapierre, Lars Eller, and Mike Sgarbossa.  With Ovechkin out, that’s changed things up even more for him, moving up and down lines and trying to find a spot that works.  Currently, he’s on the third line with Lapierre and Eller, but that might change by game 21.  Even with all that fluctuation, he’s been able to put up four each of goals and assists, squeak into the top ten on the team for points and plus-minus, and score one of the Caps’ two shorthanded goals so far this year, all while being in the bottom ten for time on ice at about 13 and a half minutes per game.  Once the lines are a little more settled, I expect his numbers to improve a bit.

Logan Thompson has been one of the best additions so far, arguably the best.  He’s got an 8-1-1 record in his even share of the first 20 games with a .914 SV% and 278 saves to 26 goals allowed.  He kind of plays similarly to the other Caps netminder, Charlie Lindgren, but so far, he’s doing it better.  They’re both kinda floppy, reactive, full-right, and on extremely cheap but expiring contracts.  They both tend to make some spectacular saves, but let in a couple head-scratchers from time to time.  It’s almost as close as you can get to having a tandem of two of the same guy, and I believe it’s the cheapest tandem in the entire league.  It won’t stay that way.  I think Thompson has already earned a new deal with Washington, whether it gets done soon or not.  Lindgren is sitting at a 5-5 record, with a .901 SV% and only 263 saves to the same 26 goals allowed.  He still has yet to show that he can consistently perform at the level he did toward the end of last season, where he stole Darcy Kuemper’s job and willed a bad team into the playoffs almost singlehandedly.  If he looked more like that, and less like an older, more loss-prone LT, he’d be right there with him in commanding a contract.  I wouldn’t be shocked to see LT be the one signed out of the tandem, with the team either looking to the free agent and trade markets or giving one of their Calder-winning Hershey Bears another shot at the big time (they haven’t been great when they’ve gotten chances so far, but things change).

The first defenseman to make his way to Washington this year was Matt Roy.  The Caps lured him away from the Kings with a six-year, $34.5 million contract, where he got to know PL Dubois pretty well (and he vouched for Dubois’ play and character to the media when he got here).  He’s been teaming up with Rasmus Sandin most of the time, and it’s been a really good pairing.  In their two-plus hours of ice time together, the goals-for to goals-against is at 10-3, with shots for and against practically even.  That’s the second best pairing plus-minus on the whole team, with the fourth most TOI.  Sandin in particular is a blocked shot machine: with 39 through these first 20 games, he’s just a little behind Martin Fehérváry and Trevor van Riemsdyk for the most on the team and per-60.  He’s also been great in front of the blue lines, with his three goals being second-most for defensemen, his seven assists good for third, and his ten total points tied for second.  Sandin and Roy are both toward the bottom of the list when it comes to giveaways among blueliners, only beat by Dylan McIlrath and Alex Alexeyev.  Roy actually scored his first goal as a Capital in the most recent game, becoming the last of the new acquisitions to light the lamp.  He’d already notched three assists, and he’s only played ten games so far.  He went out with a lower-body injury after skating just 8:39 in the season opener, and it kept him out for nearly a month before he returned with a good 20-minute outing vs. Nashville.  He’s not a scoring machine, averaging less than a third of a point per game in his last three seasons with LA, but that’s not his role (especially with Sandin potentially taking the next step into being a two-way D-man).  He’s a reliable defensive defenseman, and his points are just a bonus.

Jakob Chychrun followed Roy into DC by way of a trade with the Ottawa Senators, the asking price being Nick Jensen and a 2026 third-round draft pick.  That already looks like a ridiculous steal on the part of Washington.  Chychrun has been perhaps even better than expected in his new city, playing around 20 minutes a game and cracking the top ten in goals, plus-minus, shooting percentage, all while missing five games with an upper-body injury.  He’s a mesmerizing skater and a hard and accurate shooter.  Per NHL EDGE, as of game 19, Chychrun was in the 99th (!!!) percentile for shooting percentage among defensemen at 20%, and the 97th percentile for goals scored.  His top shot speed was over 90 miles per hour, and when you see him wind up, you’d swear it was higher.  He has served an unfortunately-high 14 PIM so far, but at least his production helps make up for it.  He’s certainly an offensively-minded defenseman, as is his typical pair partner John Carlson (who I have to point out is leading the team and 13th in the entire NHL in TOI at 24:40 at almost 35 years old).  That dynamic duo has a great track record so far, which is in part owed to both of their two-way abilities.  Carlson is a very known quantity to the Caps, but a lot of fans (myself included) were unsure if pairing two similarly styled players together would work, or if he’d be better off next to Matt Roy.  I do still think that Fehérváry is Carlson’s best match, but I can’t say that the Chychrun-Carlson combo wasn’t a good idea.  Re-signing Chychrun, who is only 26 and on an expiring contract, has to be a top priority for Washington’s front office.

Taylor Raddysh was the next player to join the team, signing a one-year “prove it” contract in free agency.  He was followed soon after by Brandon Duhaime, also a free agent but commanding a slightly longer and more lucrative contract.  They both ended up joining Nic Dowd on the fourth line, after his former partners Beck Malenstyn and Nicolas Aube-Kubel ended up as Sabres in Buffalo.  This new Duhaime-Dowd-Raddysh line, instantly christened DDR, has been outstanding together.  Despite being a primarily physical and defensive line, they’re comfortably in the top 25 of the entire NHL in goals.  They’ve faced the sixth most shot attempts of any line in the league, but they’re managing to keep their goals percentage competitive, not allowing many at all given their job.  I can’t find where to find the numbers to back it up, but I’d bet no line faces off more in their own zone than DDR, and they do an incredible job of being defensive, physical, and making the best out of the draws they’re given.  Whenever Nic Dowd gets set for a faceoff, in the way only he can, it really doesn’t feel like the danger level is that high.  Win or lose, it feels like that trio is gonna figure out how to get the puck out.  Duhaime has also been a fighter, with three this year so far and two of them coming against the Devils.  He’s won all three, but the bigger impact to me is that the line has some real muscle to go with its skill.  Not to knock the ability of Dylan McIlrath, but he’s a good point of comparison to point out that, while he made the team out of training camp and played some valuable minutes when Roy and Chychrun were hurt, Duhaime is a full-time NHLer and his roster spot isn’t contingent upon his physicality, it’s just a portion of it.  Raddysh has put up three goals and five assists already this year, and only taken one penalty despite his minutes coming in the most desperate of situations.  Dowd has been decidedly less disciplined, but I’ll have more on that later.  I like this line a lot, and I hope it doesn’t have to change any time soon.

Jakub Vrána was the last of the offseason gets to officially join the team.  After winning the Stanley Cup with the team in 2018, Vrána was re-signed, but traded away in 2021.  He had a bit of a journey, to say the least, but the important thing now is that he was invited to come back on a tryout and beat out some really promising prospects to earn a spot on the Capitals again.  It was unclear for a short while whether he would be able to win a consistent job not being scratched, in competition with Sonny Milano, but Vrána did it.  He produced more offense, he showed speed and effort, and he won his job back.  Milano going out with a long-term injury cemented that role as his.  He didn’t play the most recent game for the Capitals, owing to his relative liability as a defender, but once things are more settled, he should be drawing in more and Hendrix Lapierre should be a more consistent scratch alongside Alexeyev and McIlrath.  He’s got four goals and three assists so far in his 16 games, with a power play goal and a top five shooting percentage at a little over 22%.  He was brought in for his offensive skills and he’s been flexing them whenever he gets a chance.  You have to like what you’ve seen from him to this point in the season, you just hope he keeps getting the chance to do it and knocking his chances out of the park.

The only trade made during this quarter of the season was sending out two draft picks to reacquire another Stanley Cup winner, Lars Eller.  He’s only played five games in this latest stint with the Capitals, but it’s a trade that made sense to me as soon as I saw it.  He brings a real stability to a third line that’s been struggling to find exactly that.  It doesn’t hurt that he has experience with Jakub Vrána, and the organization as a whole.  He’s only produced one assist and six shots on goal in those five games, but it’s really early and much like Mangiapane, he’s also had to deal with the line being juggled around between and during games.  I expect that he’ll be able to center (no pun intended) the line and, once it settles in, turn it into a real weapon in the Caps’ arsenal.

Dylan Strome has finally arrived.  A third overall pick in the 2015 draft, Strome has always had star potential in his play, but this is the first season where he’s been a clear top-level center.  With Bäckström sidelined for the entire season, Strome started on the top line with Ovechkin and Aliaksei Protas (except that one game where it was Mangiapane in Protas’ place), and he’s racked up 22 assists in 20 games.  He’s tied for third place in the league, and the guys ahead of him have played more games.  On top of that, he’s scored six goals and is shooting at 20%.  He’s also winning over 55% of his faceoffs for good measure.  Strome has also taken another step into being a real team leader, acting more as the veteran he is in the locker room and wearing the alternate captain A patch in Ovechkin’s absence.  He’ll almost certainly earn it full-time once Tom Wilson becomes the team captain in 2026, and if he keeps playing like this, he’ll truly deserve it on and off the ice.

Strome isn’t the only young Cap to take big offensive steps.  I mentioned earlier how Rasmus Sandin is evolving into a two-way blueliner, but we also have to acknowledge the growth of Aliaksei Protas and Connor McMichael.  Protas has been on the top line since the second game of the season, and he’s not gonna let that spot go any time soon.  He’s put in seven goals and dished out 11 assists, shooting 22.6% (third among everyone with more than one shot).  I didn’t really see it coming at the end of last season, but he looks great and the Protas-Strome-Ovechkin line has been great too.  They’re the top line of the entire league in goals, which is partially due to Ovechkin’s explosion, but credit has to be handed to the 23-year-old Protas and 27-year-old Strome just as much.  Connor McMichael has been on the steady second line with Tom Wilson and PL Dubois, and he’ll likely take the team lead in goals and SOG soon.  He’s netted thirteen so far, just two behind Ovi, and he’s got seven assists to his name too.  His two power play goals are tied for second on the team, and here’s hoping that goes up too.  His shooting percentage is second only to Ovechkin’s, not counting the absolute sharpshooter Mike Sgarbossa who’s one for one.  He’s been the offensive anchor for the line after Wilson’s hot start cooled back down to reality, and until Dubois’ puck luck regresses from the extreme pits of hell back to the mean, he’ll need to continue being that.  He can do it.

I’ve mentioned the power play a couple of times.  It’s bad.  Like weirdly bad.  It’s currently 22nd out of 32 around the league, at a pretty sad 17%, but there was a stretch where it was all the way at the bottom, and there’s often still games where it looks like it should be.  They’re converting at rates that make no sense when you see how good their 5-on-5 numbers are.  There’s times where they get no good looks and the puck is cleared over and over again, there’s times where they only get one or two chances, there’s times they get a ton and just get goalie’d, and once every five or six times they look competent and actually score.  Things have been changing, especially in Ovechkin’s absence, and the numbers are trending the right way, but it’s one of the two biggest points of worry for me.  Before I get to that second one, a quick shoutout to the penalty kill units.  The Caps PK% is currently at 84.6%, fifth in the NHL, which is impressive considering the circumstances I’ll go into next.

Penalties.  So many penalties. It’s really not as many as it feels like compared to the other teams around the NHL, with the Caps right around the middle of the pack at 15th most PIM, 179.  The bigger problem than the number is the nature.  They take a lot of stupid penalties.  It’s mostly high sticks, trips, and hooks, almost all of which could be avoided with a modicum of discipline.  Their PK is good, so the penalties aren’t the reason they lose the games they do, but it does feel like they take more in the games where effort is bad and the vibes are off.  If they could tighten up, they would be so much better than they are, which is already great.

A huge reason for that greatness is their second-year head coach, Spencer Carbery.  Carbery already had a case for the Jack Adams coach of the year trophy last year for helping to sneak that team into the playoffs, but he’s a favorite this year for how he’s managed to create amazing chemistry on and off the ice with a lot of turnover and a lot of players searching for roles and redemptions.  You can probably point to him for a lot of the impressive plays that we’ve seen out of Dubois, Sandin, McMichael, Vrána, and more.  He’s a great confidence builder, but not a smoke blower.  He tells it like it is and is refreshingly transparent, but he isn’t unnecessarily harsh.  He tries things, and they tend to work.  He’s a young head coach at only 43, and has had his hands on several different levels of the Caps organization including coaching several 2018 Cup winners along with the South Carolina Stingrays and the Hershey Bears, maybe some of that has something to do with it.  Whatever it is, he’s been close to a miracle worker.  The postgame videos we get from the Caps after wins are infectiously fun, with barking and raucous applause for anyone who shows up big in the game.  All the new team members acquired in the offseason have fit in perfectly and you’d never know they hadn’t been here for years.  They’ve all scored goals and racked up assists, with no warm-up period needed.  Eller will show up more on the scoresheet soon too, there’s almost no doubt about it with the system Carbery has in place.

That’s about all I’ve got on the first quarter of the 2024-25 season.  I don’t think I’ll have anywhere near as much to say when we’re at the halfway point, but I also won’t have a ton of new acquisitions to talk about…right?  I don’t think so.  Between now and the 42-game mark, there’s some interesting ones to look at more closely, and I’ll list those below the fold.  Thank you so much for reading, and I’d love to know your thoughts on the season so far and/or my analysis, either on Bluesky, Twitter, or in the comments here.


Key Matchups Ahead

Monday, November 25, 7 PM @ Florida Panthers

Saturday, November 30, 7 PM @ New Jersey Devils

Friday, December 6, 7 PM @ Toronto Maple Leafs

Friday, December 20, 7 PM vs. Carolina Hurricanes

Saturday, December 28, 7 PM @ Toronto Maple Leafs

Thursday, January 2, 7 PM vs. Minnesota Wild

Saturday, January 4, 12 PM vs. New York Rangers

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