"Any general statement is like a check drawn on a bank. Its
value depends on what is there to meet it.”
-- Ezra Pound
Quietly and methodically, Dmitry Orlov has been climbing the rankings of Washington Capitals defensemen. If Orlov has his typical season, he could finish on the doorstep of the top-ten defensemen all time in games played, in the top ten in goals and game-winning goals. He is already in the top ten in assists (tenth), points (tenth), plus-minus (tied for sixth), even strength points (tenth), overtime goals (tied for fifth), hits (second since the league began compiling them in 2005-2006), blocked shots (seventh), and takeaways (third). A typical season would have him climb a notch or two (or more) in each of these categories).
Orlov has done it with consistency. His point totals over the last five seasons have clustered between 27 and 33 points, and he accomplished that without missing a game. The 397 games he appeared in over that period is tied with Keith Yandle among defensemen and one fewer than Brent Burns.
Getting a lot of ice time last season was not a recipe for success as far as Orlov was concerned. In 24 games in which he skated more than 23 minutes, the Caps were just 11-8-5. At the other end, the Caps were 8-3-1 in the 12 games in which he skated less than 20 minutes.
Orlov did have a decent year in terms of his personal possession numbers. His 53.4 percent shot attempts-on ice at 5-on-5 was, in fact, the second best of his career (54.3 percent in 2016-2017) and was his first season over 50 percent since that career best season.
Odd Orlov Fact… Only three players in team history have recorded more seasons having played in 82 games before their 30th birthday than the four recorded by Dmitry Orlov (he will turn 30 in July): Karl Alzner (six), Nicklas Backstrom (six), and John Carlson (five).
Odd Orlov Fact II… Dmitry Orlov is the only native of Novokuznetsk, Russia, to have played in the NHL whose first name is not “Sergei” (Bobrovsky and Zinoviev).
Odd Orlov Fact III... After posting 15 goals in the first 105 games he played against current Metropolitan Division teams, Orlov has no goals in his last 60 games against Metro opponents.
Fearless’ Take…
Dmitry Orlov quietly chews up minutes. Since he came into the league in 2011-2012, he has more games with 20 or more minutes of ice time for the Caps (288) than all but two defensemen: John Carlson (607) and Matt Niskanen (350). And, in 2019-2020 he recorded his second-highest average points per game (0.39) of his career, just short of the 0.40 points per game he posted in 2016-2017.
Cheerless’ Take…
Dmitry Orlov’s season mirrored the Caps in having a good start and a weaker finish. In the 2019 portion of the season, Orlov was 3-16-19, plus-3, in 41 games. But in the 2020 portion of the regular season he went 1-7-8, plus-2, in 28 games. And then he was 0-3-3, minus-1, in eight postseason games, extending his streak without a goal in the playoffs to 23 games.
Potential Milestones to Reach in 2020-2021:
- 200 career points (he currently has 180)
- 11th all-time in games played by a defenseman for the Caps (he needs 55 to pass Ken Klee (570))
- 10th all-time in goals scored by a defenseman for the Caps (he needs seven to pass Robert Picard (42) and Klee (43)).
- 9th all-time in points by a defenseman for the Caps (he needs 23 to pass Rod Langway (202)).
- 6th all-time in plus-minus by a defenseman for the Caps (he needs one to break a tie with Karl Alzner (plus-61))
- 9th all-time in game-winning goals by a defenseman for the Caps (he needs two to pass Al Iafrate and Larry Murphy (nine apiece))
- 4th all-time in minutes played by a defenseman for the Caps (he needs 1,217 to pass Brendan Witt (10,768) and Sergei Gonchar (11,478))
- 5th all-time in blocked shots by a defenseman for the Caps (since the league began compiling them in 2005-2006, he needs 17 to pass Matt Niskanen (579) and Jeff Schultz (592))
The Big Question… Can a Dmitry Orlov-John Carlson pairing make for some magic on the blue line?
John Carlson already has a body of work that puts him in the top echelon of defensemen for a franchise that has had a lot of very good ones. Dmitry Orlov is methodically, brick by brick, building a case to be included in that same group, eventually. What is unknown at the moment is how much a pairing of these accomplished defensemen can perform as an elite pairing. Orlov was paired, for the most part, with Matt Niskanen in the Caps Stanley Cup season of 2017-2018, and he was a fine complement to Niskanen. Carlson does not have the same sort of edge with which Niskanen played, and he is a more productive offensive defenseman, but there are similarities in his style that tease at the potential of this pairing to be one of the bright spots in this lineup. What this pairing will have to avoid, is being absent minded in its own end. Orlov does seem to have an adaptable game though, one that can allow him to shoulder additional defensive responsibility without diminishing the consistency of his offensive production.
In the end…
The 2009 Entry Draft has proved to be deep in quality NHL defensemen. It is easy for a player like Dmitry Orlov, taken 55th overall in that draft with a career marked more by consistency than electrifying moments and gaudy numbers, to get lost in the glow of defensemen such as Victor Hedman (taken second overall in that draft), Oliver Ekman-Larsson (sixth), Ryan Ellis (11th), Dmitry Kulikov (14th), and Nick Leddy (16th). But Orlov ranks 10th among defensemen taken in that draft in games played (516), tenth in goals (37), eighth in assists (143), eighth in points (180), tied for fourth in plus-minus (plus-61), 11th in power play points (21), seventh in game-winning goals (eight), and 11th in ice-time per game (19:53). There is little reason to believe that Orlov will do anything but make a statement that adds, in his painstakingly consistent fashion, to what has been an impressive body of work to date.
Projection: 56 games, 6-14-20, plus-7
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