The Peerless Prognosticator is ON THR AIR!!!
The Washington Capitals get no rest from their win in Boston
on Saturday afternoon as they take the ice for a matinee against the
Philadelphia Flyers at Verizon Center on Sunday, the first of what will be a
home-and-home set against the Flyers that wraps up in Philadelphia on
Wednesday.
The Capitals enter the game carrying with them a four-game
winning streak and hoping to extend their good fortune to their longest winning
streak of the season. Meanwhile,
Philadelphia comes into the home-and-home with five wins in their last six
contests since the beginning of February.
This has the potential to be a pivotal point of the season for both
teams with the Flyers holding a one-point lead over the Caps for third place in
the Metropolitan Division and an automatic playoff berth.
The Flyers have outscored their opponents by a 19-13 margin
in their recent 5-1-0 run. The 13 goals
against is a bit misleading in that more than half of them came in a 7-3 rout at the
hands of the San Jose Sharks last Thursday.
One of the things that has made the Flyers successful lately has been
the consistency of their power play. In
posting five wins over their last six games the Flyers are 4-for-20 (20.0
percent) with the man advantage, part of a longer stretch in which Philadelphia
is 9-for-36 over their last 11 games. As
part of that run the Flyers had single power play goals in nine of those 11
games.
The penalty kill has been efficient over the Flyers’
5-1-0 run (18-for-21; 85.7 percent), but consistency is what sets it apart. The Flyers have not allowed more than one
power play goal in a game in this six-game stretch.
Individually, Claude Giroux and Wayne Simmonds have done the heavy lifting
for the Flyers since the beginning of February, scoring-wise. Giroux is 3-5-8 in his last six games,
Simmonds 2-5-7. For Giroux it has been a
long climb to rejoin the ranks of the top performers in the NHL. He opened the season without a point in his
first five games, but since then has only gone consecutive games without a
point three times. He has not gone
consecutive games without a point since he was held off the score sheet by
Calgary and Colorado on December 31st and January 2nd. Since then, Giroux is 8-13-21 in 20 games. He is 9-7-16 in 19 career games against
Washington.
Where Giroux has been consistent, Simmonds has been
streaky. He comes into this game on a
four-game points streak (1-4-5), his fifth streak of four or more games with
points this season. He also has had five
streaks of three or more games without a point. Simmonds is 3-4-7 in 14 career games against
the Caps.
With Ray Emery day-to-day with a lower body injury, Steve
Mason seems unlikely to yield to call-up Cal Heeter in the role of number one
netminder for at least the first game of the home-and-home. Mason has four of the five wins in the Flyers’
5-1-0 run of late and has been solid in doing so. His goals against of 1.93 and save percentage
of .939 is quite a turnaround from an eight-game stretch in which Mason was
2-4-1 (one no-decision), 3.83, .875. He
is 4-3-2, 2.59, .917, with two shutouts against Washington in nine career
appearances.
1. Philadelphia has
had a reasonably good season, health-wise.
The Flyers have dressed only 25 skaters this season. According to the site mangameslost.com the
Flyers have a total of 163 man-games lost as of March 1st, only 39
lost to team-reported injuries, the latter being the fewest in the league.
2. Philly starts
slowly and closes with a rush on offense.
Their 42 goals scored in the first periods of games ranks 22nd
in the league, their 69 third period goals ranks second. In the middle frame only Edmonton and the New
York Islanders have allowed more goals than the 68 allowed by Philadelphia.
3. No team in the
league has found itself shorthanded more frequently than the Flyers, 241 times
in 61 games. They also happen to have
had the second most power play opportunities (223).
4. The Flyers do very
well against empty nets. They lead the
league with ten goals into vacant cages.
When you add in the seven empty net goals scored against Philadelphia
(tied for 11th highest), it might explain why the Flyers have the
fourth fewest number of one-goal decisions this season.
5. Philadelphia is a
weak possession team. In 5-on-5 close
score situations the Flyers rank 22nd in Corsi-for percentage, 26th
in Fenwick-for percentage.
1. This
home-and-home, which will close out the season series between the clubs, is the
second home-and-home between Washington and Philadelphia this season. The previous instance was in mid-December
when the Caps split the pair, winning 5-4 in a Gimmick at Verizon Center
followed by a 5-2 loss in Philadelphia.
2. John Carlson is
the first Caps-drafted defenseman other than Mike Green to register ten goals
in a season since Sergei Gonchar recorded 18 goals in 2002-2003. He is the first American-born defenseman drafted
by the Caps to record ten goals since Kevin Hatcher had 16 for the Caps in
1993-1994.
3. The Caps have
power play goals in four consecutive games against Philadelphia, going 6-for-21
(28.6 percent). You probably knew that
Alex Ovechkin led the way, but he was not alone. Marcus Johansson has two of those six power
play goals, matching Ovechkin’s total.
Joel Ward and Troy Brouwer have the others.
4. For you plus-minus
fans… Nine Caps are on the plus side of the ledger this season. Three of them (Steve Oleksy/+7, Nate
Schmidt/+4, and Patrick Wey/+4) are in Hershey.
Two others (Julien Brouillette/+4, Casey Wellman/+3) have a combined 12
games with the Caps this season, the remainder of their time having been spent
in Hershey. One (Alexander Urbom/+1) was
waived in early-January. One (Mikhail
Grabovski/+4) is injured. That leaves
Joel Ward and Jason Chimera, both plus-1.
5. The recent Caps
possession numbers can be summed up in one word… yikes! In six of their last eight games the Caps
were at or under 50 percent in both Corsi-for and Fenwick-for in 5-on-5 close
score situations. On the other hand,
they are 5-2-1 in those games. Go
figure.
The Peerless’ Players to Ponder
Philadelphia: Kimmo Timonen
Teemu Selanne is not the only Finnish hockey player who is
having an effective twilight to his career.
Kimmo Timonen, the 38-year old native of Kuopio, Finland, has been just
about as effective in defensive terms as Selanne has on offense for the Anaheim
Ducks. Of defensemen playing in at least
45 games this season, Kimonen has the third highest Corsi-for relative
percentage (plus-6.9%) at 5-on-5, the Corsi-for percentage relative to team's Corsi-for
with the player not on ice. His 54.4
percent Corsi-for is 18th among 141 defensemen in this group. He will no doubt draw the tough assignment of
marking Alex Ovechkin in this contest.
Washington: Mike Green
Mike Green, who is just coming off a stint on the injured
list with what appeared to be a concussion, does not have a point in the last
three games in which he appeared, and he has been on ice for four of the last
six goals scored against the Caps. He is
tied for 250th among 286 defensemen in plus-minus. Yet he is still a positive possession player. He has the best Corsi-for relative percentage
among any defensemen playing in more than 10 games for the Caps (plus-7.6%),
and his Corsi-for and Fenwick-for percentage are over 50 percent. What the Caps need as their regular season
winds down is for Green to bring all the good points back together and
translate it into production.
Keys:
1. Rerun. Playing Philadelphia is not unlike playing
Boston, although the Flyers are not quite in the Bruins' class as a hockey club. The same things apply here as they did against Boston. The Caps will have to be sturdy in the tough
areas – the boards, behind the net, top of the crease.
2. Five-on-Five. Beating Boston is always good, especially
these days when wins will be hard to come by.
However, the Caps still need to do better at 5-on-5 going forward. The Flyers are not an especially effective
club at 5-on-5, their 0.93 goals for/against ratio being essentially equivalent
to that of the Caps (0.92). The Caps
need to establish 5-on-5 dominance.
3. Line of
sight. The Flyers are not bashful about
going into dark places to try to get ugly goals. Washington needs to give their goalies a
chance to see pucks.
In the end…
When faced with a home-and-home, fans might have a tendency
to look at them as a set. In a real
sense this home-and-home is exactly that.
These teams are barely distinguishable statistically – scoring offense,
scoring defense, 5-on-5 play, home record, road record. The difference is how they get there in terms
of style. Philadelphia does it with a
more physical style, the Caps with a deeper skills approach. The team that can imprint these games with
their style will be the one to take three or four points out of them.
Sunday: Capitals 4 – Flyers 2
Wednesday: Capitals 3 – Flyers 2
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