There are only two weeks that remain until the Utah Hockey Club begins training camp with a trip to Los Angeles and the Rookie Face-Off Tournament. They look to get better and so do the Washington Capitals who took a big step forward in their development under first year head coach Spencer Carbery.
Last season he was 12th in the Jack Adams Award like Utah coach Andre Tourigny who is ninth. Most eyes of course will be on Alex Ovechkin, who is 42 goals away from the record but the youth of the Caps core should not be second guessed writes Aex Tumalip of The Hockey News:
""One player in particular to watch is Hendrix Lapierre, the 22 year old who scored 22 points in 51 appearances last season. Lapierre also tallied his first career Stanley Cup playoff goal against the New York Rangers and showed flashes on what he can develop into this year.""
- Alex Turnalip/The Hockey News
Lapierre will be going up against Josh Doan, who is also in the running for the Calder Trophy Turnalip writes, which goes to the rookie of the year in the league. He's been tearing it up on the lake over the summer but he'll be looking to breakout on the ice like Lapierre.
Doan has a similar skillset to Lapierre and showed glimpses of what he could bring as he totaled nine points in just 11 games including five goals with one being a game winner. It will be very interesting to see these studs battle it out.
In other news Sportsnet mentioned both Alex Ovechkin and Logan Thompson when they revisited bold NHL predictions. Rory Boylen writes this on the Great Eight:
""Always dangerous to bet against a player making a serious chase towards Wayne Gretzky's goal record but, we thought, with the aging Capitals roster clearly in decline, eventually that would rub off on a 38 year-old sniper. And through much of last season this looked like it would be an absolute slam dunk of a prediction - through 44 games, Ovechkin had just nine goals for a 0.2 per game pace.""
- Boylen
Boylen though would add the following, "However, goal scorers can be streaky and over his last 35 games played, Ovechkin ran hot, scoring 22 more times. That got him to 31 goals on the season, which was still the lowest output of his career in any 82-game scedule. And it barely made our prediction right, as he finished with a 0.39 goals per game rate."
