The Washington Capitals’ inability to score goals has been a major topic 18 games into the 2023-24 season. After falling to both the Edmonton Oilers and San Jose Sharks — two of the NHL’s bottom three teams in goals against — a combined 7-1, the Capitals’ inability to score is back in focus in the media.
Head coach Spencer Carbery was a guest on The Sports Junkies Wednesday morning and asked to address his team’s inability to put the puck in the net.
The Capitals rank above only the bottom-feeding San Jose Sharks (1.64) with their 2.33 goals per game rate this year.
“It’s just the same thing that’s been an issue for us all year and it’s probably going to continue to creep its head,” Carbery said. “We’ll work on it every single day and pay attention to it but just our lack of scoring and ability to finish and make that last play, beat a goalie one-on-one, score on a breakaway. What you see from our group is that we’re just not a high octane, gonna be able to have six, 25-goal scorers in our lineup. We just have to manufacture goals and we’re going to have to find ways to get secondary chances and we need maybe eight or nine guys to have 12 goals. It’s just where we’re at as a team.”
Carbery is correct with his math. As things currently stand, the Capitals have just one player on pace to top the 25-goal mark this season. Dylan Strome has scored eight goals through 18 games which sees him on pace for 36 goals over a full 82-game slate.
A total of seven Capitals players are on pace for at least 12 goals this season. One of those being captain Alex Ovechkin, who is scoring goals at the lowest rate of his storied NHL career. Ovi has just five goals through 18 games which is a 22-goal pace. That would be two goals fewer than his previous career low of 24, which came in 45 games during the pandemic-shortened 2020-21 campaign.
While the team has seen its top guns like Ovechkin struggle to find their past production, they’ve still been able to rattle off enough wins to keep them seventh in the Eastern Conference in terms of points percentage. While that hot streak shot them up the standings, Carbery is aware that it came despite the lack of offense.
“Through that stretch of winning, if you looked under the hood of what was happening in the games, we were in a very similar spot,” Carbery said. “What we did there was get some fantastic goaltending, the penalty kill was good, we had some timely goals, we won a bunch of one-goal games, and we came back. We showed the character of our group of finding ways to win but there’s still that underlying finishing and creating offense [issue] and that’s what we’re really working with our group on.
“We really have to work to generate that last play and find that polish offensively because it just doesn’t come to our group naturally. We’ve got young players that are trying to find themselves in the NHL let alone score a goal and be a difference maker offensively and then obviously our veteran guys are trying to do everything they can to play to the level that they have in the past and try to score and try to produce like they have in the past. It’s a challenge and we’ll continue to work on it.”
The Capitals are creating enough offense where they should not be sitting where they are in terms of goals per game. Their all-strengths 3.27 expected goals per 60 minutes ranks 12th in the league and that ranking moves even higher when considering just power play time.
Despite having far and away the worst man advantage unit in the league this season, the Capitals have created 9.4 expected goals per 60 minutes while up a man. That is the seventh-best rate in the NHL.
Carbery was asked to talk about his philosophy moving forward on the team’s power play. They have scored just three times this season and are now scoreless for over an hour of game time.
“What’s happened, happened,” Carbery said. “We are where we are. If you try to say, ‘Oh, we need to get to 15 percent by here,’ I think you’re just chasing your tail. You find a way tonight against LA. Can the power play be the difference tonight against LA? Then you focus on it the next game and you hope over time that it starts to contribute. That just falls under the scoring category. Just another example. It’s looked okay at times and at times it hasn’t looked great but it should certainly be middle of the pack numbers wise with what we’ve generated. But, just haven’t been able to finish in those areas and get that last play, shot, one-timer, whatever it might be that finds the back of the net.”
After two unsuccessful games against two of the league’s worst defensive teams, the Capitals have a whole other challenge in front of them on Wednesday night. Waiting for them at Crypto.com Arena is the 13-3-3 Los Angeles Kings.
The Kings are the stingiest team in the NHL this season, allowing just 2.37 goals against per game. Their penalty kill also ranks first with a 89.4 percent effectiveness.
Headline photo: Alan Dobbins/RMNB
