The Peerless Prognosticator is ON THE AIR!!!
The Washington Capitals wrap up their first two-game home
stand of the season on Sunday when they host the Edmonton Oilers at Capital One
Arena. The Caps are coming off one of
their best outings of the season – arguably their best home game so far – in
defeating the Pittsburgh Penguins, 4-1, on Friday night. The Oilers are coming to Washington for the
last stop on a four-game road trip. They
won their first two contests, both in overtime, and face the New York Rangers
on Saturday afternoon before arriving in Washington.
Those wins look like the start of a turnaround for the
Oilers, who have won three of their last five games after going 3-7-1 to start
the season. The two overtime wins over
the New York Islanders and the New Jersey Devils were the first consecutive
wins posted by Edmonton so far this season.
In fact, the road has been relatively kind to the Oilers so far,
Edmonton going 3-3-1 after their 4-2 loss to the New York Rangers on Saturday
afternoon.
As one might expect, Connor McDavid leads the Oilers in
goals scored on the road this season (four) and points (six), and his plus-1 is
best on the team on the road. McDavid
has been something of a road warrior over last season and this, leading the
league in road points scored (53, pending Saturday results). Not that McDavid discriminates much between
home and road games when practicing his trade.
He has points in 13 of 16 games.
Those games would appear to matter; Edmonton has no wins among the three
games in which he failed to record a point so far this season. If there is an odd feature to his scoring
this season, it is that he had a hat trick in the season opener, all of the goals
in a 3-0 win over the Calgary Flames, but he has only four goals in 15 games
since then. In four career games against
the Caps, McDavid is 1-5-6, minus-2.
That includes an assist in the Oilers’ 5-2 loss to the Caps on October
28th in Edmonton.
Ryan Nugent-Hopkins is the other number one overall draft
pick still on the Edmonton roster and is second to McDavid on the club in
points (12, tied with Leon Draisaitl) and goals (six). Nugent-Hopkins has been a solid, if
unspectacular contributor in his seven seasons in Edmonton, averaging 20 goals
per 82 games over his career and 55 points.
What he has not been is an elite scorer, never having hit the 60-point
mark in any season and topping 20 goals just once, that coming in the 2014-2015
season when he had 24 goals. He has been
on something of a roll of late, going 4-5-9, plus-2, in his last eight
games. And perhaps it is starting to
show up in his road performance.
Nugent-Hopkins recorded a goal in the Oilers’ first road game of the season,
a 3-2 loss to Vancouver on October 7th, after which he went five
straight games without a point on the road. But he has three assists in his
last two road contests heading into the game against Washington. He is 3-6-9, minus-7, in 10 career games
against the Capitals.
Last season, no goaltender appeared in more games than Cam
Talbot. His 73 appearances was several
lengths ahead of Toronto’s Frederik Andersen’s 66 appearances, making him the
12th goalie since the 2004-2005 lockout to appear in more than 70
games in a season. He is right there
again among the league leaders in appearances, having dressed for 15 of the
Oilers’ 16 games to date, second in the league to Andersen’s 16 appearances. It has not been the best of starts for
Talbot, though. His .912 save percentage
is, at this early stage of the season, his worst in his five NHL seasons. Ditto for his 2.91 goals against average,
more than half a goal worse than that which he posted last season (2.39) when
he finished fourth in the voting for the Vezina Trophy as the league’s top
goaltender. What he has been on the road
is unlucky. Despite a 2.16 goals against
average and a .933 save percentage in seven road appearances, he is 3-3-1. Talbot is 2-4-0, 2.51, .917 in seven career
appearances against the Caps.
1. Edmonton is not
shy about launching pucks at the net.
They rank third in shots on goal per game (36.1) and lead the league in
total shot attempts at 5-on-5 (862).
2. There might not be
any more disappointing – or less efficient – team on offense than the Oilers,
who despite all the shots and attempts are dead last in scoring offense (2.31),
and a lot of the problem is the power play.
Their three goals with the man advantage is more than just four other
teams.
3. The Oilers are the
only team in the league to have scored fewer than 15 goals in each of the three
regulation periods this season. They
have ten first period goals (fourth worst in the league) and 12 in each of the
second and third periods of games. That
they are tied for the league lead in overtime goals scored this season (three) is
what is keeping them at least in shouting distance of a playoff spot (five
points behind Calgary for the second wild card spot in the West).
4. Only two teams in
the league have had fewer road power play chances than the Oilers (18) – the New
York Rangers (16) and the Anaheim Ducks (11).
5. One thing the
Oilers have done so far is hit. They
lead the league in credited hits (485), almost six percent more than the
Arizona Coyotes (459).
1. The Caps might be
emerging from their early season slump at home.
With the 4-1 win over the Pittsburgh Penguins on Friday night, the Caps
have three straight wins on home ice after losing three in a row.
2. Washington has
scored the same number of goals in each of the three regulation periods this
season, 16 in each of the first, second, and third periods.
3. The six power play
chances the Caps had against the Penguins was their second straight home game with
that many opportunities, and the two power play goals was their first multiple
power play goal game on home ice this season.
4. On the other side,
the Caps shut out the Penguins on four power play chances, making it the first
time this season that the Caps held an opponent without a power play goal in
consecutive games on home ice.
5. The penalty kill
might still need work, though, specifically the need to avoid doing so late in
games. No team has spent more third
period time killing penalties than the Caps (49:36), and it’s not close. The New Jersey Devils are second with 37:04
in third period penalty killing time.
The Peerless’ Players to Ponder
Edmonton: Kris Russell
You will find few 30-year old players in the NHL with as
many miles on his resume as defenseman Kris Russell. A third-round draft pick of the Columbus Blue
Jackets in 2005, Russell skated five seasons with the Blue Jackets before being
traded to the St. Louis Blues for Nikita Nikitin in a swap of defensemen in
November 2011. He spent the remainder of
the 2011-2012 season and the next season with the Blues before being traded to
the Calgary Flames for a fifth-round draft pick. After a two seasons and change with the
Flames, he was sent to the Dallas Stars for Jyrki Jokipakka, Brett Pollock, and
a second-round draft pick in a trading deadline deal. At the end of the 2015-2016 season, Russell
became an unrestricted free agent and signed with the Oilers in October
2016. He skated 68 games with the Oilers
last season, going 1-12-13, minus-5.
Russell, despite not being among the biggest of NHL
defensemen (5’10”/173 pounds) is capable of logging big minutes. In his ten seasons before this one he
averaged more than 20 minutes a game four times, more than 23 minutes a game in
three of them. His ice time is down
quite a bit from last season, though, almost four fewer minutes per game (21:13
last season versus 17:25 this season. In
15 career games against Washington, Russell is 1-3-4, plus-10.
Washington: Jay Beagle
If you are not a big offensive contributor, you have to earn
a check in the NHL contributing in other ways.
In one respect, Jay Beagle is an elite player. Of 160 players in the NHL having taken at
least 50 faceoffs, Beagle ranks second in winning percentage (62.5 percent),
trailing only Anaheim’s Antoine Vermette (63.8 percent). No player having taken at least 20
shorthanded draws has won a larger share (67.2 percent). He has been amazing on home ice, winning 68
of 91 draws (74.7 percent) and not being below 64 percent in any home game so
far. And, he kills penalties. His 3:21 in shorthanded ice time per game is
fourth among 352 forwards having appeared in at least ten games so far.
What Beagle has not done a lot of so far is score at a past
equal to that last season when he set career bests in goals (13), assists (17),
and points (30), along with a plus-20.
He has just two goals so far, both scored on the road, and five
points. It is not an efficiency issue,
as his shooting percentage (15.4) is better than last year’s (13.0). He has just 13 shots on goal in 17 games so
far. He has not averaged less than one
shot on goal per game since he had 60 shots in 62 games in 2013-2014. In eight career games against Edmonton, Beagle
is 2-1-3, plus-4.
In the end…
The Oilers have not won a game on the road in regulation
time this season, all three of their wins coming in overtime. And, they are in the last of a four-game road
trip, playing their third game in four days.
It is a team and situation of which the Caps should take advantage. It puts a premium on putting the Oilers on
their heels early, to try and shorten the competitive portion of the game. A win here would be a nice springboard as the
Caps head out after facing Edmonton on a two-game trip against Western
Conference opponents. And it would
enable the Caps to do some more leap-frogging in the ridiculously crowded
Metropolitan Division standings.
Capitals 4 – Oilers 2
