Record: 2-0-1
Say what you will about the Caps’ shortcomings – they have
bad possession numbers, they aren’t as deep as last season, etc. – but they
grind out points. Week 13 was their
tenth consecutive week at .500 or better in standings points earned of
standings points available, and they are 20-9-2 over that span. It was just the third week in 13 in which
they did not lose a game in regulation, but it was the eighth time that they
recorded at least two wins in a week.
The odd part of the week for the Caps was in their first
game, a 1-0 Gimmick loss to the New York Rangers at Madison Square Garden. The teams played 65 minutes without a goal
being scored, leaving things to the Gimmick.
The Rangers won in the freestyle phase, the second time in the Gimmick
era that the Caps played to a 0-0 tie after 65 minutes. They lost their other instance, that to the
Tampa Bay Lightning in the season finale of the 2013-2014 season.
The Caps would go to extra time in their following contest,
a 4-3 trick shot win over the Boston Bruins that was their fifth extra time
game in six contests, an odd occurrence in itself, given that the Caps had
played extra time in five of their first 33 games.
Washington would not need extra time to defeat the New
Jersey Devils, 5-2, to end the week and tie the Tampa Bay Lightning for the
most home wins this season (16). It also
left the Caps with a 6-3-1 record against the Metropolitan Division to end the
year. On an individual level, it was Barry Trotz' 737th win as an NHL head coach, breaking a tie with Lindy Ruff for fifth-place on the all-time coaches' win rankings.
Offense: 2.67 /game (season: 3.00 /game, rank: T-11th)
It was not a big week for the Caps on the offensive side of
things, but they did spread it around.
Eight goals scored, eight different players scoring them. And even there it was good balance among
centers (Nicklas Backstrom, Lars Eller), wingers (Alex Ovechkin, Tom Wilson,
Brett Connolly), and defensemen (John Carlson, Matt Niskanen, Christian Djoos). Eleven different players finished the week
with points, Ovechkin (1-3-4) and Carlson (1-3-4) leading the group with four
points apiece.
Djoos’ two-point week lifted him in the scoring rankings
among rookie defensemen. His third goal
of the season placed him in a tie for third place in goal scoring among that
group, and adding an assist for the week put him in a tie for fifth in points
among rookie defenseman (eight). He
shares that ranking with teammate Madison Bowey, making the Caps the only team
in the league with two rookie defensemen among the top five in points. Djoos is also fifth in that group in plus-minus
(plus-8).
Tom Wilson’s two-point week (1-1-2) gave him six goals for
the season, one within his career high, and left him sixth on the team in
points (6-12-18), a reflection of his continued improvement and assumption of
more responsibility. His plus-11 is
second-best on the team (Matt Niskanen: plus-15).
Multi-point games were the noteworthy item in the week’s
last game, the 5-2 win over the Devils. Alex
Ovechkin (0-3-3), John Carlson (1-2-3), and Nicklas Backstrom (1-2-3) finished
with three-points against New Jersey. It
was the second time this season that the Caps had three players with
three-point games (Backstrom, Ovechkin, and Tom Wilson in a 6-2 win over the
Chicago Blackhawks on December 6th). Christian
Djoos’ goal and an assist gave the Caps four players with multi-point games
against New Jersey, tying their season high in players with two or more points.
One of those times was against the Devils, in a 5-2 win on October 13th.
Defense: 1.67 / game (season: 2.80 /game, rank: 13th)
At the end of October, the Caps had allowed the sixth-most
number of shot attempts at 5-on-5. That
number has not improved with time, and Week 13 was an example. The Caps allowed 139 shot attempts at 5-on-5
for the week, third-most in the league, leaving them having allowed the fourth-highest
number of 5-on-5 shot attempts this season.
The silver lining here is that the Caps did not deteriorate through the
week, allowing 49 5-on-5 shot attempts to the Rangers, 40 to the Boston Bruins,
and 50 to the New Jersey Devils, and their SAT percentages improved through the
week – 46.74 against New York, 48.72 against Boston, and 52.83 against New
Jersey.
If there was a bright spot it was in finishing the week on a
strong note. In their first seven
regulation periods of hockey for the week, the Caps allowed opponents 79 shots,
an average of 33.86 shots per 60 minutes.
However, in the last two periods of the week against the Devils, the
Caps allowed a total of just 15 shots, closing out a game in a fashion that the
Caps need more of as the season enters its second half.
Goaltending: 1.58 / .949 / 1 shutout (season: 2.65 / .915 /
1 shutout)
Last season, Philipp Grubauer was perhaps the best backup
goalie in the league. This season, he
might be the league’s most hard luck netminder.
No game reflected his season to date more clearly than the opening game
of the week when he stopped all 37 shots he faced in the hockey portion of the
contest, many of them of the highlight reel sort, before succumbing in the
Gimmick against the Rangers, 1-0. It was
the first shutout by a Capitals goaltender this season. After a slow start, Grubauer has stopped 220
of the last 235 shots he has faced (.936 save percentage), but he has just a
2-3-2 record (two no-decisions, appearances in which he stopped all 23 shots he
faced) to show for it.
Braden Holtby took the ice for the last two games of the
week and was solid, stopping 56 of 61 shots (.918 save percentage) and
finishing the week second in the league in wins (22; Tampa Bay’s Andrei
Vasilevskiy has 24). That Holtby would
allow three goals in one game and two in the other he played is part of an odd
pattern he has had for the past five weeks.
In his last 14 appearances dating back to November 22nd he
has allowed no fewer than two and no more than three goals in any (that
includes three goals on 12 shots in 21 minutes in a loss to the New York
Islanders).
Power Play: 2-for-8 / 25.0 percent (season: 19.5 percent,
rank: T-13th)
The Caps finished the week with power play goals in
consecutive games for the first time since putting together a three-game streak
in Games 27-29 in early December. They
ended the week with a power play goal on two opportunities against the
Devils. It marked the fifth straight
game in which the Caps had two or fewer power play opportunities that they
squeaked out standings points (3-0-2).
The usual subjects had the goals (Alex Ovechkin, John
Carlson) and the points (those two plus Evgeny Kuznetsov and Nicklas
Backstrom), and overall the power play was efficient at getting shots to the
net. In 14:40 of power play ice time,
the Caps managed 16 shots on goal. It
was a welcome rebound from a weak Week 12 in which the Caps were 0-for-9, their
worst week of the season to date.
Penalty Killing: 10-for-10 / 100.0 percent (season: 80.4
percent, rank: T-19th)
The Caps skated off all ten shorthanded situations they
faced in Week 13, the most situations disposed of without allowing a goal since
they went 11-for-11 in Week 6. It was a
return to form after a pair of weeks in which the PK struggled (16-for-21/76.2
percent). The Caps were reasonably
efficient in killing those penalties overall, allowing just 16 shots on goal in
18:25 of shorthanded ice time, but they did have to withstand 12 power play
shots by the Bruins in the middle game of the week in 10 minutes of shorthanded
ice time.
The five power play chances the Bruins had posed a
danger. In 10 previous games in which
the Caps allowed five or more power play chances to an opponent, they had a
record of 3-6-1, and only one of those wins was in regulation (oddly enough,
against the Bruins in a 5-3 win on December 14th). That the Caps would need the Gimmick to
settle things last Thursday against Boston should have been no surprise in this
context.
Faceoffs: 80-for-174 / 46.0 percent (season: 51.4 percent,
rank: 8th)
It was not a very good week in the circle for the Caps. They were owned by the Rangers in the first
game of the week (19-for-51/37.3 percent) and were not much better against Boston
in the middle game of the week (30-for-67/44.8 percent). It took at 31-for-56 effort against New
Jersey (55.4 percent) to get them to something resembling respectability for
Week 13. The Caps did do a credible job
in the defensive zone for the week, winning 33 of 62 draws (53.2 percent), but
that was offset by a woeful 23-for-60 performance in the offensive zone (38.3
percent).
On an individual level, the frustration was a shared
affair. Three of the four Caps taking at
least ten draws were underwater for the week: Nicklas Backstrom (21-for-53/39.6
percent), Lars Eller (15-for-37/40.5 percent), and Evgeny Kuznetsov
(14-for-29/48.3 percent). Jay Beagle was
dependable as usual, going 24-for-43 (55.8 percent).
Goals by Period:
Balance was the key for the Caps this week. Although the volume wasn’t high, and they did
get shutout against the Rangers to open the week, scoring two, three, and three
goals in the regulation periods over the last two games showed at least a
consistency of effort.
The odd part of the week was avoiding being taken advantage
in the middle, long-change period. The
Caps did not allow a second period goal over the course of a week for the first
time this season. It allowed the team to
climb to “even” in goal differential in the second periods of games this
season, giving them even or positive goal differentials in all three regulation
periods so far.
In the end…
Sometimes, what one sees on the ice, the numbers, and the
results do not seem to be aligned. Week
13 was one of those weeks. That the Caps
finished the week with a 2-0-1 record was a welcome result, but in the
eye-test, they looked out of sync against the Rangers (no doubt a function, at
least in part, of playing on what might have been the worst ice surface of the season),
couldn’t seem to quite put away the Bruins, but then skated and passed with
flair against the Devils to close the week.
The results and the numbers, at least the possession
numbers, hinted that there are things still amiss, but here we invoke the “all
other things equal” clause. All other
things equal, shot attempts are a reasonably reliable indicator of success over
a series of games. But all other things
are rarely equal, and perhaps superior skill will offset those weak possession
numbers, even over a series of games.
That seems to have been the case for the Caps in the 2017 portion of the
season, where possession numbers are weak, but they still have Nicklas
Backstrom, Alex Ovechkin, T.J. Oshie, and Evgeny Kuznetsov, among others, who
are among the most skilled players in the game.
Whether the Caps can improve their possession numbers in 2018 or keep
the dogs at bay with their skill set if they can’t improve those numbers will be
one of the story lines to watch in the year about to unfold.
Three Stars:
- First Star: John Carlson (1-3-4, plus-1, 1 PPG, 1 GWG, 8 shots on goal, 26:37 average ice time)
- Second Star: Christian Djoos (1-1-2, plus-3, 6 shots on goal, 12:57 average ice time)
- Third Star: Philipp Grubauer (0-0-1, 0.00, 1.000 save percentage, one shutout, one hard-luck loss)
