The first six weeks of the NHL season have already separated the teams that are rolling from the ones still searching for answers. Boston has been one of the early surprises, while the clubs in Pennsylvania are trying to find their footing. But a few teams have fallen well short of what was expected, and three stand out in particular.
San Jose is one of them. The Sharks came into the season with optimism after adding new pieces to the roster, but the results have not followed.
Wins have been hard to come by, and there are still questions about how well the group is gelling. There’s time to fix it, but the team needs to settle in fast if it wants to get where it was supposed to be.
The bigger concern in San Jose may be what’s happening behind the scenes. The players and coaches do not appear to be on the same page right now, and that raises the possibility of change.
Pittsburgh is another team that has underwhelmed. The long-running core of Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Kris Letang, and Erik Karlsson may be nearing the end of its run together, and the Penguins are leaning heavily on that group once again.
The problem is that the younger players have to give them more. Without that, the season is going to stay stuck.
Age is becoming harder to ignore, too. Regression is starting to show with the veterans, and General Manager Kyle Dubas has some real decisions ahead about where this season is headed. For now, Pittsburgh is only ahead of the Philadelphia Flyers in the Metropolitan Division.
Washington rounds out the list. The Capitals made several upgrades to the roster, but the standings have them sitting in the middle of the Metropolitan Division. There’s still room for their best hockey to come, and help from the young forwards would go a long way.
The biggest issue, though, has been in net. Logan Thompson and Charlie Lindgren have both posted below a .900 SV%, and that simply has to improve if Washington wants to be an elite team. Jordyn Kyrou has delivered at a point-per-game pace, and Alex Ovechkin can’t be expected to keep producing insane numbers at this stage of his career.
The encouraging part for all three teams is that these problems have shown up early. The Penguins need their youth to start contributing, with the possibility of an AHL call-up in play.
The Sharks have a culture issue to sort through. And the Capitals mostly need their goalies to start making saves.
In Other News...
Capitals Showed Something Important In A Win They Had To Have
The Capitals got the kind of win they absolutely needed, edging the Panthers 4-3 in a game that had plenty of early swings and a little bit of everything else. Jack St. Ivany got Washington off to a fast start, and the Capitals kept answering Florida with timely offense while Logan Thompson provided the kind of goaltending that can steady a team when the game starts to tilt.
Washington also had to navigate a long stretch without Tom Wilson after a major penalty and ejection changed the feel of the night, which only made the response more notable. Aliaksei Protas and Pierre-Luc Dubois were part of the scoring mix as the Capitals protected their lead and found a way to finish a game they could not afford to let slip away. [Read more 🡒]