May 9, 2014 11:55 am

Yesterday was Fehr and today it’s Grabo! What is this– my birthday?! No, it’s not my birthday; you people actually showed up this time.

Mikhail Grabovski is awesome and played awesome. Then he got hurt, which was not awesome. But then he came back– and before you think that’s awesome, lemme stop you right there. It was not.

By the Numbers

58	Games played
15.4	Average time on ice per game
13	Goals
22	Assists

51.0%	Shot attempt percentage during 5v5
56.5%	Goal percentage during 5v5
8.9%	On-ice shooting percentage during 5v5
93.4%	On-ice saving percentage during 5v5

Peter’s Take

Mikhail Grabovski was GMGM’s big signing of the summer of 2013. Grabo scored a hat trick in his first game as a Capital, and there was much rejoicing.

Adam Oates didn’t make Grabo’s job easy though, using the possession forward in the bottom six for much of November and December. That’s when the Chimera-Ward pairing first bloomed, as any flower would do in the presence of Grabo’s loving warmth.

Then Grabo got called up to the big time, sharing shifts with Alex Ovechkin. Together for 235 minutes, the Russian and the Belarusian scored 58.8 percent of goals during 5v5– the highest rate Ovi saw with any forward all season. That period– late December and early January— saw the Caps playing some of their best hockey, but it didn’t last.

Grabo injured his leg at the end of January and lasted about one shift before he re-injured it one month later. The Caps had to do without their most versatile player for the toughest part of the season.

So what’s next for Grabo? He says he’s waiting to learn what the Caps’ coaching situation will be, so we all have that in common I guess. If I were setting off-season priorities, it’d go like this: 1) get a general manager; 2) get a coach; 3) buy Peter one of those awesome desk chairs from the conference room at KCI; and then 4) SIGN GRABO. If they go out of order, I’m cool with that. But I really want that chair.