Ovechkin, Carlson having stellar seasons, so where’s the awards buzz?
MONTREAL — Even if John Carlson wanted to ignore his stat line and how it ranks in the National Hockey League, his Washington Capitals teammates wouldn’t let him. Nicklas Backstrom and Alex Chiasson regularly remind him that his name is still atop the points leader board for defencemen, and Carlson still isn’t quite sure what to make of it all.
“Obviously, I know,” Carlson said.
“It’s not like I won’t look because I’m superstitious or anything like that. The guys are constantly joking about it, too. So, I know everything, but I don’t actively look at it to prove a point or search for some goal.”
Meanwhile, Alex Ovechkin has no shame in admitting he monitors where he stands in the goalscoring race. “I don’t believe when someone says, ‘I don’t care about the stats,’ and all of this kind of stuff. Of course they want points, they wants goals,” he said earlier this month.
And just as Carlson’s name is at the very top of the list for points among defencemen, Ovechkin leads the league in goals with 44. Their impressive individual seasons have the Capitals again poised to win the Metropolitan Division, even after salary cap constraints weakened the roster in the summer.
But while both players are at the top of their respective fields for a division-leading, playoffbound team, both are afterthoughts in NHL awards conversations. When the Professional Hockey Writers’ Association conducted a midseason vote before the allstar game, Carlson received just one first-place vote for the Norris Trophy, which goes to the league’s best all-around blueliner, and he finished in sixth place overall. In voting for the Hart Trophy, the NHL’s MVP award, Ovechkin garnered two first-place votes, placing seventh place. Though some of the candidates for both awards have changed as the season has progressed, both Carlson and Ovechkin flaunted impressive numbers relative to their competition both at midseason and now.
Washington entered this campaign without three of its defencemen from last season, so more responsibility fell on Carlson. When fellow right-shot blueliner Matt Niskanen got hurt in just the fifth game, Carlson averaged nearly 28 minutes per game for the next month.
“I remember all of the coaches early in the year saying they were going to test (Carlson) and see what he’s made of,” Niskanen said. “I think he’s answered that pretty well. He’s been a stud.”
Carlson has played a careerhigh 24:58 a night while scoring 15 goals and 46 assists for 61 points, also career highs. Eleven of his 15 goals have been at even strength, though Carlson has tallied 24 assists on the power play with the responsibility of setting up Ovechkin’s shot from the left faceoff circle.
Ovechkin arguably has a more compelling case for the Hart Trophy. At age 32, he’s scored 44 goals and 37 assists this season, on pace to finish with his best point total since the 2009-10 season, when he was 24. After the team parted with two top-six forwards, Ovechkin has accounted for 19.4 per cent of the Capitals’ goal total this season. No other player has a larger share.
“I think he can fly under the radar a little bit when he’s doing it every year,” forward Tom Wilson said.