The Peerless Prognosticator is ON THE AIR!!!
The Washington Capitals take their final road trip of the
regular season when they head to Beantown to face the Boston Bruins in a
Saturday matinee matchup. The Capitals, who spent most of the season as a good, if not
particularly elite road team in terms of record, have won six of their last
seven road contests since dropping all three games in their annual California
trip.
Boston comes into this contests as perhaps the streakiest
team in the NHL at the moment. In their last 25 games, the Bruins have four
winning streaks of three or more games and a losing streak of four games. They
had a six-game winning streak, their longest of the season, snapped by the
Ottawa Senators in a Gimmick on Thursday night.
Over that 6-0-1 run in their last seven games, Boston has
done it with defense and goaltending. As far as the latter, it has not mattered
whether the goaltender was number one netminder Tuukka Rask or backup Anton
Khodobin. Between them, they stopped 187 of 194 shots, a spellbinding .964 save
percentage. Khudobin, who is enjoying quite a revival after an awful start to
his season, grabbed two of the six wins, allowing just three goals on 62 shots
(1.50/.952). It extended a personal winning streak to six straight in his last
seven appearances, over which he has a goals against average of 1.98 and a save
percentage of .928. This comes after a poor 1-5-1, 3.06, .885 record in his first
eight appearances this season. Khudobin in 4-2-1, 2.41, .923, with one shutout
in seven career appearances against the Caps.
Khudobin is a credible possibility to start this game
because of Tuukka Rask’s mysterious inability to solve the Caps. He comes into
this game with four wins and the trick shot loss over the Bruins’ 6-0-1 run,
stopping 128 of 132 shots (0.79/.970), and he has a pair of shutouts to go with
it. That, however, comes after enduring a personal four-game losing streak over
which he allowed 15 goals on 95 shots (4.53/.842).
That brings us to Rask’s almost bizarre lack of success
against the Caps. In 15 career appearances, he has never won a regular season
game against Washington in which he allowed a goal. He pitched a 16-save
shutout in a 3-0 Bruins win at TD Garden on March 6, 2015. In his other 14
appearances, Rask has 14 losses – nine in regulation and five in extra time,
all of them in overtime (no Gimmicks here). It is not as if his record is
ghastly against the Caps; he has a career 3.14 goals against average and a .887
save percentage, and he has allowed more than four goals in a game to the Caps
only once. One might think that would be good enough, if not for a winning
record, then at least a few more wins along the way.
Among the skaters, David Pastrnak leads the team in points
in their 6-0-1 run, going 2-4-6. In a way, Pastrnak has been a microcosm of the
Bruins’ last month – streaky. He was kept the scoresheet in the loss to Ottawa
on Thursday, but he still has points in five of his last six games, which
followed a point in four games, which followed an 11-game points streak.
Generally, Pastrnak has been a very productive player over his last 32 games,
going 15-22-37, minus-1, three of those goals being game-winners. He is 1-3-4,
minus-3, in five career games against Washington.
Patrice Bergeron leads the club in goals over their 6-0-1
stretch, potting four pucks over those seven games. The short burst in goal
scoring follows a nine-game streak without one, tying his longest goal drought
of the season. The four goals gave Bergeron 21 on the season, making it six
straight full seasons (not including the abbreviated 2012-2013 season) in which
he recorded 20 or more goals. He will be appearing in his 899th career game on
Saturday, all of them with the Bruins, the fifth highest games-played total in
team history spanning 92 seasons. Few players this season are as skilled as
Bergeron in perhaps the most basic of plays – the faceoff. Among 55 players
taking at least 1,000 draws this season, Bergeron ranks third (59.9 percent),
behind only Anaheim’s Antoine Vermette (62.3 percent) and Colorado’s Matt
Duchene (62.7 percent). Duchene’s rank might explain the fact that the
Avalanche are the only team in the league this season to hold Bergeron under 50
percent in faceoffs in a game twice. Bergeron is 10-25-35, minus-5, in 40
career games against the Capitals.
2. The Bruins are the
12th-best scoring offense in the league (2.85 goals per game). They might be
better but for the fact that they are fifth in the league in missed shots, one
of eight teams in the league with at least 1,000 (1,061).
3. Only one team in
the league has recorded more shots on goal this season than the 2,699 recorded
by the Bruins (Pittsburgh: 2,703).
4. With all the
shooting, the Bruins are not an especially successful team when out-shooting
opponents. No team has out-shot opponents more times than Boston (59 in 81
games), but their winning percentage in those games of .508 is just 12th in the
league.
5. One has to wonder
about that peculiar disconnect between out-shooting teams and winning, since
the Bruins are the second best team in the league in shot attempt shares at
5-on-5. Their Corsi-for (54.77 percent) is second only to the Los Angeles Kings
(55.12). Their adjusted Corsi-for (for score, zone, and venue) is best in the
league at 54.86 percent (numbers from Corsica.hockey).
1. Braden Holtby
leads the league with 42 wins, one more than Columbus’ Sergei Bobrovsky and
Edmonton’s Cam Talbot. If he wins on
Saturday or Sunday (assuming Philipp Grubauer will get one the starts in the back-to-backs
to end the regular season, and neither Bobrovsky nor Talbot win both of their
remaining games, Holtby would become the first goaltender to lead the league in
wins in consecutive seasons since Martin Brodeur led the league in four
straight seasons from 2002-2003 through 2006-2007.
2. No team has more
Gimmick losses on the road this season than the Caps. They, along with Florida, Toronto, and
Carolina, have four such losses.
3. Washington has the
second-best power play on the road this season at 25.9 percent (Toronto is at
28.1 percent).
4. The Caps have
three players with three game-winning goals on the road this season. Alex Ovechkin is not one of them; he has
one. Marcus Johansson, Evgeny Kuznetsov,
and T.J. Oshie are the three.
5. The Caps still
have not recorded a goal at 4-on-4 this season.
Depending on whether Carolina, the other team that has yet to do so,
accomplishes the feat, the Caps could be the fourth or fifth team since the
2004-2005 lockout not to have scored a 4-on-4 goal in a season. Edmonton (2012-2013), Anaheim (2012-2014),
and Florida (2014-2015) are the others.
The Peerless’ Players to Ponder
Boston: Torey Krug
When one thinks about who among the league’s defensemen are
the go-getters when it comes to power play points, the names Erik Karlsson,
Brent Burns, and even perhaps the Caps’ Kevin Shattenkirk come to mind. A name that might not is that of Torey
Krug. But there he is, tied for fourth
in the league among defensemen with 25 power play points this season. The odd thing about his production is how
little it seems to matter in the bigger picture. The Bruins are 3-3-0 when he recorded a power
play goal, 11-6-2 when he recorded a power play assist. In fact, Boston is 1-2-0 when he recorded one
of each. When he records points of any
nature, though, Boston is 27-10-3, 17-20-4 when he does not. Krug is 0-1-1, minus-6, in 11 career games
against the Caps, but is listed as day-to-day with a lower body injury.
Washington: Daniel Winnik
Daniel Winnik has had a nice little scoring run of late. He is 3-2-5, plus-5, in his last seven games
with points in four of them. Not bad
numbers for a fourth liner, even over a small sample of games. He is also one of 14 Capitals with at least
ten points in road games this season (3-9-12).
He has one of those goals and two of those assists in his last four road
games. As it is, Winnik already has a
career best in goals scored in a season (12), topping the 11 he had with
Colorado in 2010-2011 and in his rookie season in Phoenix (now Arizona) in
2007-2008. It is a product of a keen eye
shooting the puck, his 15.0 shooting percentage being the best of his ten-year
career, the only time in those ten years he shot better that 10 percent for a
season. Winnik is 3-2-5, minus-2, in 16
career games against Boston.
In the end…
It is all about seeing things to their completion and doing
things the right way, taking good habits into the postseason by repeating them
in these last two games of the regular season.
With the Caps already having set a team record for wins in a season at
home, closing the road portion of the season on a 6-1-0 run would put them in
an enviable place as the postseason gets underway.
Capitals 4 – Bruins 2
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