Looking Ahead Today

As JP posted here, at Japers' Rink, Michal Neuvirth was signed by the Caps today. Good news, to be sure. Now, consider this:

Alexander Ovechkin
Jeff Schultz
Mike Green
Chris Bourque
Mikhail Yunkov
Sami Lepisto
Clayton Barthel
Oscar Hedman
Pasi Salonen
Peter Guggisberg
Andrew Gordon
Justin Mrazek
Travis Morin
Sasha Pokulok
Joe Finley
Andrew Thomas
Patrick McNeill
Daren Machesney
Tim Kennedy
Nicklas Backstrom
Semen Varlamov
Michal Neuvirth
Francois Bouchard
Keith Seabrook
Oskar Osala
Luke Lynes
Maxime Lacroix
Brent Gwidt
Mathieu Perreault

That, folks, is the list of 29 draftees by the Caps since 2004. It’s turning into quite a list.

Players who have seen at least some playing time with the Caps includes:

Alexander Ovechkin
Mike Green
Jeff Schultz

AHL contributors:

Chris Bourque
Sasha Pokulok (ok, it’s one game this year, but he’s had injury issues)

Under contract:

Nicklas Backstrom
Daren Machesney
Travis Morin
Patrick McNeill
Andrew Gordon
Sami Lepisto
Michal Neuvirth (the newly minted Cap)

Add to this the fine performances chronicled in recent weeks and months for such as:

Semen Varlamov
Francois Bouchard
Joe Finley
Oscar Osala

…and even The Peerless, who has lamented the Caps inability to find any nuggets past the first round in the last decade, has to admit this looks mighty fine for the longer term prospects of the club.

Five...

The Peerless was fiddling around with some numbers looking at players picked fifth in the NHL entry draft. We looked at #5 picks going back to 1991. Since then, in 16 drafts, 15 skaters were taken (Carey Price being the only goaltender). We looked at those players two different ways. First, we broke the 15 into the 1991-2000 group to identify players that have an established identify and record in the NHL. The other five we set aside as players to watch.

In the first group there are five defensemen and five forwards. Given the concentration of forwards at the top of the 2007 draft rankings, it seems that would be the place to focus. If you look at a “composite” of those five forwards, given their careers so far, a composite average season for the #5 pick as a forward is 18-26-44, -5. And, these five players took, on average, an additional season before playing at least 40 games in an NHL season.

What is curious is the “players to watch” category. There are four forwards among the five skaters in that group. Only three have NHL experience, and their “composite” 82-game season line is 19-24-43, +1. These are players at the dawn of their careers, and yet they look a lot like #5 picks from 5-15 years ago. The Peerless wouldn’t read too much into it though…the numbers are skewed by those put up thus far by Thomas Vanek (68-64-132 in 163 games).

Any way one looks at it, you’re looking at a year or so until the #5 pick actually arrives, and when he does, another two or three years before he’s a solid citizen. But chances are, a solid citizen he will be.

Oh, and here’s the dark cloud . . . of those ten skaters taken at #5 from 1991-2000? Know how many are with the team that drafted them?

. . . none.

Show Me...

As Tarik El-Bashir pointed out in the Capital Insider yesterday, the AP reported that....

The Stanley Cup finals lost nearly a quarter of what already was a small television audience. Anaheim's 1-0 victory over Ottawa in Game 2 on Wednesday night got a 0.6 cable rating on Versus and was watched in 446,000 homes in the United States. The rating was down 33 percent from last year's second game, a 5-0 victory for Carolina over Edmonton, which received a 0.9 cable rating (600,000 homes) on OLN, as the same network was known then.

Through two games, the Stanley Cup finals averaged a 0.7 rating, down 22 percent from last year's 0.9, and households are down 20 percent, to 485,000 from 606,000 last year.

446,000 . . . approximately the population of Kansas City, Missouri. Like the fine folks in that part of the world ask in a common sense way, "show me" how this is a good thing.