The starting assumption for everyone about the 2023-24 Washington Capitals should be they’re gonna be bad. They missed the playoffs last season by 12 points with an aging roster, wracked by injury, while important players got sold at the trade deadline. Now they’re all one year older, playing in a tough division, at the end of an era, with major doubts around core players, and without any reason to assume they’ll improve.
The Athletic’s Dom Luszczyszyn predicts the Capitals will earn 81 standings points this season, one more than last year but still far from good enough to make the playoffs. “It stems from an aging core that hasn’t found any meaningful replacement over the last five seasons,” Luszczyszyn says, along with Shayna Goldman and Sean Gentille. “It’s the same guys, slowly getting worse and worse every season, with no one stepping up or stepping in.”
And yet, under Spencer Carbery and with a raft of encouraging offseason developments, there’s reason for hope in DC.
Washington’s most important defender, John Carlson, was critical to the team’s early-season success last year. The Capitals controlled 53.1 percent of the shot attempts when Carlson was on the ice in that time. Then he suffered a serious injury just before Christmas that kept him out of action for three months. Returning for the final ten games of the season, Carlson saw his on-ice shot-attempt percentage drop to 45.4 percent. That number reflects the team having given up on their playoff hopes by that point, but in any case it’s far below expectations for Carlson. With nearly ten months of recovery, the Capitals – and probably you too – hope to see Carlson doing what he does best: being aggressive on attack and eager to use his heavy shot.
Now more than a year removed from a life-altering hip-resurfacing surgery, Nick Backstrom has looked rejuvenated. In typical Nick fashion, he did not discuss it at length. “I’ve got nothing more to say about it — I’m 100 percent.”
Carbery was more expansive. “I think having the extra time but also being able to fully recover from his surgery and now being able to prepare for a season and a training camp, having a full offseason to do that, I think he’s excited and it’s been going well for him.”
But the most effusive praise came from Backstrom’s linemate, Tom Wilson. “Nick looked amazing,” Wilson said. “He looked like himself from ten years ago. He was moving his feet really well. He’s so smart. I’ll play with that guy any day of the week.”
A return-to-form from Backstrom could be the single most impactful improvement from last season. The Caps were outscored 27 to 14 during Backstrom’s shifts last season, placing him in the bottom third percentile among all NHL forwards. But if Backstrom can regain even some of his old form, become a productive partner for Alex Ovechkin again, or if he can even put up a solid top-six performance, Washington’s fortunes would improve a lot.
The third of Washington’s injured core was Tom Wilson, who I guess I’m obligated to call their future captain. Wilson tore his ACL during the 2022 playoffs, costing him half of the 2022-23 season – and apparently hindering him upon his return. Wilson stayed individually productive, partially thanks to hot special-teams goal-scoring, but the team got outscored 28 to 20 during Wilson’s five-on-five shifts. If Wilson, one full year removed from surgery, finally has his speed back, we’ll feel that progress especially on the defensive side of the puck.
Connor McMichael, 22, showed promise in the 2021-22 season, but his 2022-23 outing was by all accounts a disaster. McMichael played only 50 minutes, during which the Capitals controlled just 22.5 percent of the expected goals — down from 56.5 percent in 700 minutes the year before. McMichael didn’t play well in that early going, and the former coach had seen all he wanted to see. Now, Carbery thinks McMichael can become a difference-maker. “He’s confident in his ability and he has swagger,” Carbery says. “In those moments throughout a game, he wants the puck. He wants to be the guy out there making the play defensively and offensively.”
Whether at center or wing, whether as a playmaker or individual finisher, if McMichael can play like he did in 2021-22 – plus add finishing, he’ll be a boon anywhere in the lineup.
Aliaksei Protas has played up and down the lineup in the preseason, but it looks like he’ll be settling in among the bottom-six forwards, right where he was last year, which feels appropriate for a such a lorge, dependable player. Sharing more than four hours with Nic Dowd in 2022-23, Protas saw the Capitals control 54.0 percent of the shot attempts and 56.9 percent of the goals. I secretly harbor a hope that he could play higher in the lineup, but right now that buzz belongs to Ivan Miroshnichenko, whose name I spelled right on the first try. Miroshnichenko, 19, was part of maybe Spencer Carbery’s most important preseason experiment: trying new linemates for Ovechkin. Sharing 16 minutes with Ovechkin (19 years his elder) and Backstrom at the end of September, Miroscnichenko recorded two assists and three shots on net. That was a sterling audition, and though it’s uncertain if he’ll make the opening-night roster, I’m confident we’ll see him again soon enough.
I like to think of the preseason as good at giving us adjectives, but maybe bad at giving us anything else. Washington’s preseason has been surprising, inspiring, energetic, rejuvenated, positive, optimistic, and more. Spencer Carbery is saying all the right things, and a bunch of core players are signaling that they’ll improve over last season, which was cursed. A new unproven coach and hopes for injury recovery are the kinds of factors that prediction models don’t really consider when they spit out that the Caps have a 20 percent chance of making the postseason. I think we’ve got real reason to hope for a bounceback season, but I’m not willing to call it more than a hope yet. The Capitals still have big questions looming over them:
- Can Anthony Mantha become a productive scorer?
- Where and when will Joel Edmundson fit in?
- When will Max Pacioretty suit up?
- Is Evgeny Kuznetsov going to play or will it be his grumpy doppelganger?
- Will Ovechkin play defense?
(Okay, the last one is a no.)
But there remains a credibility problem. The preseason is notorious for being the time of year when some veteran tells the press he’s in the best shape of his career sixty days before his groin explodes. On-ice performance is complicated by the variable competition of loafing superstars easing their way into a long campaign and tryharding marginal players desperately holding onto their roster spots. It’s a grab bag, where the win-loss total is useless. All we really get are player insights. But boy are those encouraging.
The Capitals season kicks off Friday, October 13. Buckle up.
Headline photo: Katie Adler/RMNB
