“We know what we are, but know not what we may be.”
-- William Shakespeare
Last season, Washington Capital defenseman John Carlson had
the season a lot of players dream of.
Career bests in almost every statistical category, votes for the Norris
Trophy as the league’s best defenseman (he finished fifth), a Stanley Cup
championship, and a brand new contract that is exceeded in average annual value
only by that of Nashville’s P.K. Subban and, barring the unforeseen, will make
him a Capital well into the next decade.
With all that happening during and after last season, one
might forgive Carlson to have regressed a bit in the first year of his new deal
and on the heels of a long and successful Stanley Cup run last season. Quite the opposite; Carlson was one of the
rare players who improved on his many of his previous “contract year” numbers
after having signed the big deal. He was
off slightly in goals (from 15 to 13), despite a better shooting percentage
(7.0 to 6.3 percent last year). He was a
plus-21 this season, a large improvement over an “even” rating in 2017-2018. He had 30 power play points, slightly up from
the 28 he had last season. And, he
averaged a career high 25:04 in ice time per game.
Carlson has become part of the core in terms of his
contributions. Washington was 30-11-5 in
the 46 games in which Carlson recorded a point, 18-15-3 in the games in which
he did not or was out of the lineup. And
there was an odd feature about his ice time.
Defensemen are often praised for the ice time they log, the more being
evidence of their durability and the degree to which teams depend on them. However, it doesn’t seem to be closely
associated with team success. For
instance, nine defensemen logged at least 27 minutes in ice time at least 15 times this season, including Carlson.
Only the San Jose Sharks won a higher
percentage of available standings points when Brent Burns logged at least 27
minutes (28 of 44 available points/63.6 percent) than the Caps did when Carlson
logged at least 27 minutes (18 of 30 available points/.60.0 percent). No player skates in a vacuum, and both the
Sharks and Caps were better teams this season than, say the Los Angeles Kings
with Drew Doughty (51.4 percent of available standings points earned) or the
Edmonton Oilers with Darnell Nurse (46.9 percent of available standings points
earned), but it is one more indicator of how important John Carlson has become
to the Caps.
Fearless’ Take… When one looks at
this era of Capitals hockey, it will be dominated by Alex Ovechkin and Nicklas
Backstrom as figures on the team’s “Mt. Rushmore” of this era. John Carlson makes a case for being on that
sculpture as well. When the season
ended, Carlson found himself among the highest-ranked defensemen in many all-time
statistical categories. Looking at eight
such categories (games, goals, even-strength goals, power play goals, assists,
points, game-winning goals, and plus-minus rating), Carlson ranks in the top
five in six of them (all but goals (sixth) and power play goals (seventh)). Only three defensemen in team history rank
higher: Sergei Gonchar, Calle Johansson, and Kevin Hatcher (seven categories
apiece).
Cheerless’ Take… Carlson had a
strange year scoring goals. He recorded
at least one goal in 11 games this season, and the Caps had a 5-4-2 record in
them. Compare that to last season when
Carlson had at least one goal in 15 games, and the Caps went 12-2-1.
Odd Carlson Fact… John Carlson is
one of two NHL defensemen to have posted at least 65 points in each of the past
two seasons. San Jose’s Brent Burns is
the other. Only Burns has recorded at
least one point in more games over those two seasons (100) than Carlson (97).
Bonus Odd Carlson Fact... Through Friday's games, John Carlson still leads all NHL defensemen in points recorded over the last two postseasons (25, one more than Boston's Torey Krug and Winnipeg's Dustin Byfuglien).
Bonus Odd Carlson Fact... Through Friday's games, John Carlson still leads all NHL defensemen in points recorded over the last two postseasons (25, one more than Boston's Torey Krug and Winnipeg's Dustin Byfuglien).
Game to Remember… March 26th vs. Carolina
When the Capitals took the ice against the Carolina
Hurricanes at Capital One Arena on March 26th in the front half of a
home-and-home set against the Hurricanes, they were stumbling to the finish of
the regular season. Going into that
contest, the Caps 3-3-1 in their previous seven games and lost two of three
games on the four-game home stand that would wrap up against Carolina.
The Caps broke on top late in the first period on a T.J.
Oshie goal, but Carolina tied it late in the second when Dougie Hamilton scored
for the Hurricanes. Early in the third
period, the Caps broke the tie on Alex Ovechkin’s 49th goal of the
season. Seven minutes later, John
Carlson provided some insurance. Evgeny Kuznetsov got things started on the
play when he flagged down a puck out of the air as he was about to circle
behind the Carolina net. As he did so,
he collided with the stick of goalie Petr Mrazek, knocking the stick out of
Mrazek’s hand. Coming out the other
side, he sent the puck cross ice to Dmitry Orlov at the left point. Orlov
wound up for a slap shot, but he saw Carlson pinching in from the right wing
circle, filling in the space that Kuznetsov vacated. Orlov’s slap-pass was right on Carlson’s
stick blade, and Carlson redirected the puck behind Mrazek to make it 3-1 at
the 11:16 mark of the period. It was
Carlson’s 399th career point.
With the clock under three minutes to play and the Hurricane
net empty, Carlson ran down a loose puck in the corner to the right of goalie
Braden Holtby and chipped it up the boards to Ovechkin, who feathered it to
Nicklas Backstrom exiting the defensive zone.
Backstrom skated to the red line, taking a peek behind him to see if
Ovechkin was in position to receive a return pass and try for a 50th
goal of the season, but there were two Hurricanes between Backstrom and
Ovechkin. Backstrom fired a one-hopper
down the ice and into the empty cage for the final tally in the 4-1 win. Carlson earned an assist on the play to
become the fifth defenseman in Capitals history to reach the 400 point mark, joining Calle Johansson (474), Scott Stevens (429), Kevin Hatcher (46), and
Sergei Gonchar (416).
Game to Forget… January
15th at Nashville
On March 3, 2017, John Carlson skated 19:43 in a 2-1 win
over the Philadelphia Flyers. For each
of the next 140 regular season games, he skated at least 20 minutes. That brought Carlson and the Caps to
Nashville to face the Predators. Nashville
has not been an especially hospitable venue for the Caps, who were 5-7-1 with
one tie in 14 visits there in team history.
What made this game more difficult for the Caps was that it was the back
half of a back-to-back set of games, the front half being a 4-1 win over the
St. Louis Blues the previous evening.
The Caps might have wished they didn’t make the trip. The Predators had a 2-0 lead before the game
was 11 minutes old, and after a power play goal by Nicklas Backstrom
interrupted the home team’s fun (Carlson assisted), Nashville went on to score
four more goals in a row before a T.J. Oshie goal provided the final 7-2
margin.
Carlson was not around at the finish, though. By the time Nashville scored their seventh
goal, Carlson had already been on the ice for two Nashville goals (one of them
scored shorthanded), took a penalty, and had one shot attempt (a miss). Before that seventh goal for Nashville,
Carlson was dumped to the ice by Flip Forsberg, whacked in the visor as he lay
on ice, and then Forsberg slashed Carlson’s stick for good measure. Before the faceoff after the Predators’ goal,
Carlson gave the officials an earful from the Caps’ bench, for which he earned
12 more minutes in penalties, an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty and a game
misconduct that ended his evening. For
the first time since that win against the Flyers in March 2017, Carlson skated
less than 20 minutes, ending the night with 18:35 in ice time, the only time in
80 games in the regular season that he skated less than 20 minutes.
Postseason… In the
Caps’ Stanley Cup run in 2018, John Carlson was tied for the league lead in
goals among defensemen (five), led the league in assists (15), and led in
points (20). His plus-11 was second
among the league’s defensemen to teammate Brooks Orpik (plus-17). Fast forward to 2019. It did not go nearly as well for Carlson, who
finished the opening round series loss to the Hurricanes without a goal (the
first time he did not record a postseason goal since he failed to do so in a
seven-game loss to the Rangers in the opening round in 2013) and five points,
three of which came in the series opener, a 4-2 win over Carolina. Only one of those five points he recorded in
the series came at even strength, and none of them came on the road.
Looking ahead… John Carlson is signed through the 2025-2026
season, and he has a modified no-trade clause (15-team no-trade list submitted
by the player through 2021-2022, a ten-team list thereafter through the end of
his contract). That means that by the
time Carlson’s tenure with the Caps ends, he will almost certainly hold every
meaningful statistical record for the club among defensemen. He could be the team’s all-time leading
point-getter from the blue line as early as next season, although that would
require another improvement in his point total (he needs 72 points to eclipse
Calle Johansson). With ten goals he
could become the fifth defenseman in team history to reach 100 goals with the
club, and he needs 49 assists to pass Calle Johansson for first all-time on
that list.
In the end…
Finalists for NHL trophies are often a small, slowly
changing community. Take, for example,
the Norris Trophy for the league’s top defenseman. Over the last five seasons, including this
one, there have been six players filling the 15 finalist spots. Four of them – Erik Karlsson, Drew Doughty,
Brent Burns, and Victor Hedman – have been named finalists three times. P.K. Subban has been a finalist twice. This season, Calgary’s Mark Giordano broke
the lock on that gated community and was named a finalist. Despite having more goals than Doughty over
the last five seasons (57 to 51), despite having more points (269) than either
Doughty (246) or Subban (241) over the last five seasons, despite trailing only
Burns in game-winning goals (15 to 20) over the last five seasons, and despite
one of only two defensemen with at least 65 points the last two seasons (Burns
being the other), John Carlson has yet to earn a finalist spot for the
award.
What is more, Carlson is the only top point-getter among
defensemen over the last five seasons (he led all defensemen last season with
68 points) not to be named a finalist in the year in which he led the league,
and two of them won the award in their league-leading year (Karlsson in 2015
and Burns in 2017), with this year’s results pending (Burns led the league and
is a finalist). So let’s not throw up
the “defense is more than scoring” argument too strongly. It makes one wonder what, if anything,
Carlson is going to have to do to crack the seal on that container of Norris
finalists. Nevertheless, he did have a
fine season in 2018-2019, albeit marred by a disappointing postseason, a
profile he shares with a lot of teammates.
Grade: A-
