Tom Wilson is the best player on the Washington Capitals right now and the league still isn't ready.
There are still a lot of people who do not know how good Tom Wilson is. For good and bad reasons. Some simply do not know. They are hockey fans that pay attention to their team and a lot of what happens around the league goes unnoticed. Then you just flat out have the Wilson "haters" group. Those are the people who think he is nothing but a goon and a dirty player.
Who knows if either of those groups of people will end up reading this. The group of people that will likely end up seeing this don't need me saying this.
Tom Wilson is a really good hockey player.
There are not many Tom Wilson's anymore. Players that scare you physically. According to the official NHL site Wilson is 6'4" and weighs 220lbs. That's intimidating enough, but the guy can move. Wilson is a very good skater. Seeing a small guy coming at me gearing up to hit me would scare me. I know these are pro athletes, mentally they are different. But I can't imagine seeing a guy with the size of Wilson coming at you with speed is a fun experience.
That has always been Wilson. He's always been very willing to play a physical game. For better or for worse. It has helped the Washington Capitals a lot of times, or most times. Sometimes it has very much cost Wilson himself.
But Wilson has been more than just a hitter for a while now. Wilson is a legit threat offensively. Something we have seen plenty of with him getting off to a hot start this year.
Here are some of his goal totals from a few select years. 22, 21, 24. Those being the 18-19, the 19-20 and the 21-22 seasons. Is he putting up forty or fifty goal years? Obviously not, but those are real good goal scoring years for "a goon".
Wilson can do something this year that I think should open a lot of eyes and get people to think he is more than a goon. And it's not something that is coming out of nowhere. Tom Wilson can score thirty goals in a year.
If Tom Wilson played all 82 games this year he is on pace to score 102 goals. I'm going to go on a limb and say that's a little unlikely. How about 90?
Now that the bad jokes are out of the way, thirty is very doable for Wilson and he has been flirting with thirty a couple of times already in his career.
Yes, he has only a career high of 24 and his other highs are the low twenties. Wilson missed games those years. When Wilson hit twenty goals for the first time in his career in 18-19 he missed 19 games. If he played all 82 games he was on pace for 28 goals. The next season he was a little down, but he was still on pace for 25 goals. Then he had another nice 24 in 78 games in 21-22.
The year that I look at is 22-23. That year Wilson played in just 33 games. He scored 13 goals. In an 82 games season he was on pace for 32 goals. He's hovered around a thirty goal pace a couple of times in his career.
The biggest issue here is staying in the lineup. It's hard to play 82 games. Hockey is a physical sport and there is a ton of luck to staying healthy as well. Like simply being in the right spot at the wrong time and you take a puck to the foot and you now have a broken foot.
Tom Wilson is now in his twelfth season. In his previous eleven go arounds he has played over 70 games in a season six times. Some of those due to injuries, other times he missed games due to suspension. Then others a pandemic happened.
If he stays healthy and stays in the lineup and can play north of 70 games I think this is the first year Wilson hits a pretty big number in goals.
Wilson is thirty years old, turning thirty-one near the end of this season. He is in his prime. He's at the peak of his powers if you will. If he's going to do it it probably should happen right about now.
He's also on a pretty good team with some good offensive talent around him. Wilson is a no doubt top six player who will be playing with guys like Pierre-Luc Dubois, Connor McMichael, a rising player in the league and on the Capitals. If he isn't playing with those two good players he'll probably be playing with Dylan Strome and Alex Ovechkin.
He'll also get plenty of time on special teams, likely top power play with the top unit currently being himself with Dubois, Strome, Carlson and Ovechkin. Not bad. He's also scored 9 career shorthanded goals and we know he can be a threat going the other way while down a man.
All of this simply saying, he will get plenty of opportunities to score.
This is the year for Tom Wilson. Twenty goals is one thing. For some reason, just a couple of goals more and you hit thirty, it's just something else. It's the same thing with forty and fifty. Forty goals is really impressive. Then you hit fifty and you get looked at differently.
Wilson has hovered around thirty goals in the past. If he can stay in the lineup, I think for the first time he hits this big number for the first time. Not bad for "nothing but a goon".
