The Washington Capitals began a pre-Olympic gauntlet by playing on New Year’s Day in Ottawa. Their 4-3 loss to the Senators was the first of 19 games over a 36-day span.
This is not a time to spiral into a slump, and the Caps’ 6-5-3 December was marked by a pair of three-game losing streaks and a near monthlong scoring drought for Alex Ovechkin (24 days between goals). Six of the Caps’ nine January road games will be over an 11-night stretch that has the feel of a Loverboy tour, with stops in Denver, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Seattle and Detroit.
But before we embark on this challenging stretch, congratulations to Tom Wilson and Logan Thompson for being selected to the Canadian National Team for the upcoming Winter Olympics. Wilson is giving credence to “life begins at 30” by putting together a second straight career season after reaching the milestone, while Thompson is proving that his first winter in Washington wasn’t a fluke.
Both are having stellar seasons for a contender, and both get to enjoy representing their country on the Olympic stage.
Record: 21-15-5, good enough for fourth place in the Metropolitan Division (Philadelphia has 47 points but has played one fewer game than the Caps) and one point better than Buffalo for the first Wild Card (two-time defending champ Florida is the first team out at the start of January). They’re also just four points behind Carolina for first place in the Metro, making scoreboard-watching an interesting side game over the next five weeks.
Rankings: Entering January, the Caps ranked eighth (3.25 goals per game) in scoring, seventh (2.75) in goals against, 29th (15.7%) on the power play and 27th (76%) on the penalty kill. Forty games into the season, the special teams are decidedly less than special.
Iceman of the Month: Aliaksei Protas led the team with eight goals and 14 points in December, as the forward is finding his way back to last season’s pace (30 goals and 36 assists). You never know if a career year is an aberration or something to be expected, and the 24-year-old is becoming a key cog for this team.
Hot Sticks and Cold Pads: Tom Wilson tallied six goals with five assists and is on pace for passing the career highs (33 goals with 32 assists) set last year as he has 21 with 19 through 40 games. Dylan Strome posted a team-high seven assists while Wilson, Jakob Chychrun and rookie Ryan Leonard led the team in plus/minus for the month at plus four.
Chychrun and John Carlson lead defensemen with seven points (Carlson has two goals with five assists while Chychrun has five goals with two assists). Logan Thompson may have gone 4-4-2 last month, but he posted a goals-against average of 2.76 and 0.914 save percentage.
Ovi Odometer: Ovechkin had a stretch of nine games without a goal in December, but found the net against New Jersey to give him three for the month and 15 for the season. He starts January with 912 career tallies, and if he continues at the current pace, he’ll finish the regular season at 927 career goals.
Matchups of the Month: Two Saturday home dates loom large this month, with two-time defending Stanley Cup champ Florida dropping by D.C. on Jan. 17 and recent nemesis Carolina coming to Capital One Arena on Jan. 31. The Caps are 0-2 against the Panthers and the home team is 0-2 in the Washington-Carolina series so far this season. Two huge tests during a month of potential potholes.
