It's a big year coming up for Connor McMichael
Connor McMichael had a good 2023-24 season. Not great, but good for a young guy trying to prove he belongs in the league.
McMichael played in nearly every game last season. He suited up eighty times for the Washington Capitals. In those games he was able to score 18 goals and register 33 points. Again, nothing to blow you away but good stats for a young player.
Those are excellent numbers when you compare them to his previous season or seasons. In 2021-22 McMichael scored 9 goals and had 18 points in 68 games played. An OK rookie season. The next season he played only six games with Washington and did not record a single point. I call that the lost season. In terms of his NHL career, it was a season that doesn't count. He hardly played, it's hard to develop that way.
Thanks to that lost season we couldn't expect much of a jump in production from McMichael last season. Going into the season, if I remember correctly, I wanted 15-20 goals from him. He ended up with 18. That's good. One hundred percent acceptable. More importantly, it's something to build on.
For McMichael this next season is about showing everyone, showing his team and showing himself that he can be a key player on this team for years and years. This is the year we need to see the jump from Connor McMichael. This is the year we need to see him jump from promising young player to key player.
This doesn't mean we need to see a huge jump in production. At least not when talking about goals. He scored 18 goals last season, lets see him score 25 now. To be a key player you don't need much more than that.
Think of a guy like T.J. Oshie. Have we seen the last of Oshie in the NHL? Maybe. If we have he scored over thirty goals just one time in his NHL career. His career high other than his 33 in 16-17 was 26. He did that twice, both with Washington, once in 15-16, the other time in 19-20. Yet, for a lot of those years he was an incredibly important player on his team. He played in over one thousand career NHL games and he scored over three hundred career goals. You don't need to be a Alex Ovechkin to be a key player. You don't need to be a 30+ goal guy every year.
This is the season where McMichael needs to show us that he will be an important player for the Capitals. Because what if he doesn't?
What if he plateaus? Or maybe even worse, what if he regresses?
McMichael is turning 24 in the middle of this upcoming season. This will be his fifth professional season. I'm not going to go into what if he regresses. I very much doubt that will happen. Plateauing is a different discussion though.
The Capitals should be a better team this season. It looks like they will have more help offensively this year. That should mean that McMichael has more help and more opportunities to score goals and get more points. If he gets somewhere between 15-20 goals, that feels like it would be a pretty big disappointment. Unless he jumped up from 15 assists last season to 40, or something like that.
If he doesn't show us a jump where does that put him on this team going forward?
The Capitals have good prospects behind McMichael. Ivan Miroshnichenko, Ryan Leonard, Andrew Cristall seems to be coming. Does Hendrix Lapierre jump him? If these guys come in and show they belong and show they need a spot and McMichael plateaus, that's not good for his Capitals future.
What if the Capitals are good this season like I'm expecting. What happens at the trade deadline? What if McMichael is having a good season, but not having that jump that we need to see from him? With prospects behind him, with this being his fifth pro year, with the opportunity to maybe add a player to help make a run in the postseason, could a deal be there?
I don't think this would ever happen. But you have to consider all options. Would the Capitals be tired of waiting for him to show them that he is a big piece of the future? How much patience would they have with him if they had a chance to add a more established player that can help them go deeper in the spring? Would they be willing to move on knowing they have younger guys behind him that might have higher ceilings at that point?
Which is why I think this season is a big one for Connor McMichael. One way or another McMichael is going to show us something. He is either going to cement himself on this team for years to come, or he might plateau and potentially make himself expendable.
Here's to hoping the best for Connor McMichael. It is his time. What does he do with it?
