Armchair Hockey Scout Beta

This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

77

Connor McMichael

Washington Capitals Left Wing

Twenty-six goals at 24 from a 180-pound winger who takes half his shots from inside 20 feet.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2020-21WSH10000200010.09:54
2021-22WSH689918-3100001058.610:28
2022-23WSH60000500020.08:52
2023-24WSH80181533-203421313513.315:59
2024-25WSH82263157+194940517714.716:49
2025-26 so far
Career2375355108-410061842012.614:29

This Season So Far

The 2025-26 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.

Last Season

26 goals and 31 assists in 82 games — 57 points at 16:49 a night, plus-19, with 4 power-play goals and 5 game-winners on 177 shots, converting at 14.7 per cent, and 49 penalty minutes.

51.5 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 67th percentile. His ice went 35-37 against an expectation of 51.54-48.47 — seventeen goals of scoring missing, the largest shortfall on the roster, on a line that was creating well.

The Finesse Game

177 attempts at a median of 19 feet with 50 per cent from inside 20 and 15 per cent from beyond 40, converting at 14.7 per cent. The skating is the best on this roster — he beats a defenceman wide from a standing start and he arrives at the net with the puck rather than behind it.

31 assists. There is real creation here and 108 points in 237 career games at 24 says it is still arriving.

The Physical Game

6-0 and 180 and he does not play a physical game. He does not win pucks against defencemen and he is not a forechecker.

49 penalty minutes in 82 games is a moderate rate for a player this size, and a good share of it is the stick foul that follows losing a step in his own end.

The Intangibles

Twenty-fifth overall in 2019 and 237 games and 108 points, all of it here.

He is 24 and doubled his goal total. He had a minus-20 the season before at almost the same ice time, which is the part of a young forward’s development that never gets a headline and matters more than the goals.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,093 minutes

Expected goals
51.5%
67th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
49.4%
45th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 35 for, 37 against. Expected: 51.5 and 48.5.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
66th
Numbers
67th

The two rank him within 1 points of one another. It was written for a back edition, with the seasons that followed already known. Neither the agreement nor the gap says anything about the eye, and this report is excluded from the club-level comparison for the same reason.

Both bars are percentiles among the 637 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 75 on their own scale — against every other report's mean. The numbers bar ranks his share of expected goals. A gap is a disagreement about where he belongs, not two scales talking past each other.

Usual linemates

2024-25 · 1093 minutes at five-on-five

Share of his five-on-five ice time spent alongside each player, measured from shift charts. Special teams are excluded: a power-play unit is not a line.

Why the numbers land there

Five-on-five, 2024-25

The club
WSH took 50.8% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 51.5% — 0.7 above the club he did it on.
The role
First line, 1,093 minutes at five-on-five — 75th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Pierre-Luc Dubois53.8%48.3%53.8%
Tom Wilson53.1%50.2%49.5%
Rasmus Sandin50.5%52.2%50.8%

53.8% together, 48.3% for him apart and 53.8% for Dubois apart. He was worse away from Dubois, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Dubois did.

Expected-goal share while both were on the ice, and for each man in the minutes he played without the other. Apart is the pair subtracted from his own totals. It does not settle who was carrying whom — apart from each other, both were still playing with somebody — but it does say whether the share travelled when the pairing broke up.

Where he shoots from

goal on goal missed

253 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 26 of them goals. His median goal came from 10 feet. 50% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 15% from beyond forty.