The hockey IQ of Justin Williams

The player dubbed “Mr. Game 7” for his Stanley Cup championship playoff heroics, although it is a moniker he prefers to shrug off, is one smart hockey player. The hockey IQ of Justin Williams makes him the type of player that the Caps needed to add to their lineup at the end of last season. T.J. Oshie and Williams added critical veteran leadership and hard-working players to this team and helped to amplify the culture Coach Barry Trotz set out to build.

Williams’s 15G-16A-31P and +14 stats in his 43 games has him on pace for a year he has not seen since his 59 points in 2011-2012 with the Los Angeles Kings. Williams seems stoked to play on this team. His leadership has to be a huge help to Trotz, too. What better person for the players who have not played in the Stanley Cup finals to listen to on the bench.

Two years ago in the playoffs skating for the Stanley Cup champions Los Angeles Kings, Williams’s 9G-16A-25P and +13 helped that team win. His 7 points in the finals earned him the Conn Smythe trophy. The Caps can only hope for a similar experience during a playoff run that hopefully lasts longer than one series.

Williams’s contribution to the Caps this year includes lots of smart plays like dishing the puck ahead of three players against the New York Rangers and getting his own rebounds. Like making an impact regardless of his line mates, Jason Chimera and Jay Beagle, Nicklas Backstrom and Marcus Johansson, or Chimera and Evgeny Kuznetsoz. Williams assists and scores with all of them.

His hat trick and first star performance on Sunday versus the New York Rangers included a little luck and an empty net, but Williams makes his own luck, too. He is constantly involved in the play, stirs up trouble, makes great plays and gets great cycle games going with Johansson and Kuznetsov. He likes playing against the Rangers, too, since he had a 2G-1A-3P night against them for another first star performance on December 20, 2015. Williams is a key cog in the wheel of the Caps playoff hopes.

Let’s go Caps!

An Ovie classic to start the season

It never gets tiring watching Alex Ovechkin undress a defenseman, in this case New Jersey’s John Moore, and completely confuse a goalie, Keith Kincaid, by pulling the puck back to his forehand and going to the top corner of the net. It was the game winner and started the Caps rally in the third period. They outlasted a tired New Jersey team and ended up with a 5-3 victory. The Caps started the game playing sloppy hockey as if they forgot how to play during their five day break, but they got the two points.

The Caps changed again this summer, thanks to General Manager Brian MacLellan, after he assessed another gut wrenching loss in the playoffs, after, once again, being up 3-1 in the series against the New York Rangers. The top 6 forwards needed an upgrade and trades for T.J. Oshie and Justin Williams netted that at the cost of losing Troy Brouwer and Joel Ward. It seems like a good deal right now, but getting to the playoffs and further than the first round is when Caps fans will be able to tell.

In the game against the Devils, T.J. Oshie made his presence known on the ice. Even with a 0 point, minus-1 performance, Oshie’s hustle and compete level shined as he finished his checks, doled out hits and took pucks. As noted in the Washington Post, Oshie feels he had unfinished business in St. Louis so let’s hope Washington is the place where he makes up for that.

Justin Williams, the veteran winger, known as Mr. Game 7 much to his chagrin, is a Stanley Cup winning leader for the Caps locker room. He started his Caps career with two assists on special teams, one on Jason Chimera’s short-handed goal in the 1^st period and the other on the power play empty netter put in by Matt Niskanen.

Some intriguing Caps story lines for this season…

• Will Evgeny Kuznetzov continue to grow as a player and a leader? Early results, starting in the preseason, are encouraging?
• Will T.J. Oshie find chemistry playing on the opposite side of Ovie?
• Will Nicklas Backstrom successfully recover from offseason hip surgery and return to form?
• Will the confidence Tom Wilson displayed versus New Jersey and in the preseason turn into more scoring and better hockey playing from the gritty winger?
• Will Andre Burakovsky break out this season?
• Will Braden Holtby keep up his strong play in net?
• Will the Caps make it to the playoffs and escape their post season history?
• And last, but not least, will the Caps escape the dreaded jinx of Washington sports teams named to be the champion or finalist by many prognosticators at the beginning of a 162-game, oops 82-game, season? Enough already, this team has a dreadful post season history, and after watching the Nationals implode, crowning the Caps champion of anything is the last thing any Washington sports fan wants to hear.

More on all of these and other story lines as the season progresses.

Now, onto Caps versus Sharks.

Let’s go Caps!