The Washington Capitals will open the 2022-23 season on Wednesday, October 12. Before then, it’s critical that you prepare yourself for all the incoming narratives. The only way to be safe is to read my season preview series. Good news is you’re already doing that.
Today’s episode of Uncle Good Tweet Pete’s Preseason Season Preview is about how Washington may or may not develop their precious few young forwards, specifically Connor McMichael.
Ex-rookie forward Connor McMichael played 68 nearly nice games last season, averaging 10.5 minutes per game. That’s a lot of games but not very many shifts. As I belabored in our season review, McMichael has a tantalizing offensive upside, which may or may not be exploited by the Capitals this season.
Averaging just under 14 shot attempts per hour, McMichael is just somewhere outside the top quartile of forwards — basically around Trevor Zegras, but with 9 goals instead of 23. Zegras also played about seven more minutes a night, which is not to say that McMichael would produce like Zegras if only given the opportunity, but rather to say that Washington has not been inclined to give a young, high-shooting forward a substantial chance to prove himself.
Historians might recall that a similar lack of opportunity with Jakub Vrana and two-time Stanley Cup winner/flawless nephew Andre Burakovsky.
It’s unclear if that trend will continue with McMichael. In this preseason we’ve seen him on the second and fourth lines. My own guess at the depth chart back in July had McMichael somewhere in Narnia. I was probably wrong there. Especially if Oshie’s out to start the season, the slightly chonkier McMichael should get some real ice time early on – even if not at his preferred position of center, and that means his error bars for the year are going to be wide. He could get ice time and make it count, he could get ice time and squander it, or he could not get very much ice time at all.
In one sense, that uncertainty is comforting. Dom Luszczyszyn’s model was cool on Washington’s top-six forwards overall, and Micah McCurdy’s model considered the team’s five-on-five offense to be two percentage points below average. The possibility of a breakout year from McMichael would mean turning the tide on Washington’s age decay for a bit, but more on that soon.
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