Spaced out over the rest of June, we will feature end-of-season profiles for every player on the Washington Capitals, a year-in-review of sorts looking at their statistics, story lines and such. The full list of published pieces can be found at the end.
In the beginning of forward Marcus Johansson’s fifth season with the Washington Capitals, there was a word. It cropped up among Coach Barry Trotz’s earliest directives for the 24-year-old, a simple charge yet one that had always contrasted against Johansson’s natural urges. The word had never been in the forward’s repertoire, buried beneath the deferential desire to pass.