The Peerless Prognosticator is ON THE AIR!!!
The Washington Capitals, fresh off a win over the San Jose
Sharks to wrap up a 1-2-0 California trip, return home on Monday night to host
the Winnipeg Jets. The game kicks off an
odd stretch of the schedule for the Caps, who will alternate home and road
games over a five-game stretch before a three-game road trip at the end of the
month.
If it has not occurred to you by now, these are not your
father’s Winnipeg Jets (or Atlanta Thrashers, for that matter). The Jets come into this game with 41 wins
this season in 68 games. Only two teams
in franchise history – the 2006-2007 Thrashers and the 2014-2015 Jets –
finished a season with more wins, 43 in both instances. Their 91 standings points are fifth best in the
league as of Sunday morning.
And this is as complete a team as there is in the league, a
top-five team in scoring offense (3.31 goals per game/4th), scoring
defense (2.60/5th), and power play (24.4 percent/2nd);
and they are just outside the group in penalty killing (82.9 percent/T-6th).
They Jets have been a dominating club on the road over
almost two months, going 8-1-1 in nine road games dating back to January 20th. They have done it largely with defense and
goaltending, holding opponents to two or fewer goals in six of those nine road
contests, including two shutouts. Steve
Mason has one of those shutouts, a 31-save win over the New York Rangers on
March 6th. The other shutout,
and the lion’s share of the road work over this stretch, was authored by Connor
Hellebuyck, who is 5-1-1, 1.96, .944, and that one shutout (34 saves in a 4-0
over St. Louis on February 23rd) over this nine-game road
stretch. Hellebuyck, in his third season
with Winnipeg, has appeared in 56 games to date, tying his career high set last
season. His 35 wins so far almost
doubles his win total over his first two seasons (39 in 82 games), and his .923
save percentage overall is a career best.
He has six shutouts this season, third most in the league and doubling
his total over his first two seasons. In
three career games against the Caps, Hellebuyck is 2-1-0, 2.26, .924.
Blake Wheeler leads the Jets in overall scoring this season
(18-58-76, ninth in the league in points), and he has been particularly
productive since his last set of consecutive games without a point in late
January. Over his last 18 games he is
4-18-22 and has not gone consecutive games without a point (the last time he
did was in late January), recording points in 14 of those 18 games. Wheeler, who has established himself firmly
as a 25-goal a year scorer (average of 26.5 goals over his last four seasons),
is not quite scoring at that pace – he is on a pace to finish with 22 goals –
but his points production is solid. With
76 points in 68 games, he is on a pace to finish 92 points, which would eclipse
his current career high of 78 points in 2015-2016. Wheeler is 5-12-17, plus-6, in 32 career
games against the Caps.
The Jets get substantial contributions on offense from their
blue line. Eight of the nine defensemen
to have dressed for the Jets this season have goals, and six of them have at
least ten points. Tyler Myers leads the
group in goals with six. Myers, who won
the Calder Trophy as the league’s top rookie in 2009-2010 with the Buffalo
Sabres, went into decline as an offensive contributor over his next five
seasons and was eventually traded to the Jets in February 2015 with Drew
Stafford, Joel Armia, Brendan Lemieux, and a first round draft pick for Evander
Kane, Zach Bogosian, and Jason Kasdorf.
If the winner of a trade is the team that ends up with the best player,
Buffalo (getting Evander Kane) might have been looked at early on as the
winner. Things have not turned out that
way. Kane is now in San Jose, Bogosian
has been injury prone, and Kasdorf has one game in goal for the Sabres on his
resume (that coming in 2015-2016; he currently plays in the ECHL with
Cincinnati).
Drew Stafford has since moved on (currently in New Jersey
with the Devils), but Joel Armia has 11 goals and 25 points for the Jets. And while Jack Roslovic (taken with that
first round pick) has just 26 games with the Jets this season, and Lemieux is
in the AHL, Myers has resurrected his career on the blue line. His 34 points in 68 games is the most he has
in a season since he had 37 points in his 2010-2011 sophomore season in the
league. The odd part of his season in
his offensive statistics is that with six goals on 116 shots, his 5.2 percent
shooting is the worst of his career to date.
However, when he gets a point, the Jets win. They are 20-3-1 in games this season when
Myers recorded a point. He is 2-4-6,
minus-1, in 20 career games against Washington.
1. Only Carolina has
fewer major penalties (seven) than the Jets (seven).
2. The Jets are tied
with Toronto for the most wins in the league when leading after one period
(24), and they lead the league in wins outright when leading after two periods
(33).
3. Blowouts are the
Jets’ thing. They have 21 wins this
season by three or more goals, tops in the league. In fact, 31 of the Jet’s 68 decisions are by
three or more goals (10 losses). No team
has more such decisions.
4. In the Western
Conference, only Vegas has more 5-on-5 goals scored (153) than Winnipeg (146). No Western team has more 5-on-4 goals scored
(49), and no team in the league has more 5-on-3 goals scored (five, tied with
Pittsburgh).
5. Winnipeg is tied
with Toronto for most first period goals scored (76). The Jets and Tampa Bay are the only teams
with more than 70 goals scored in each of the regulations periods this season. Winnipeg and San Jose are the only teams
having allowed 60 or fewer goals in each of the regulation periods this season.
1. Only Carolina and
Arizona have fewer shorthanded goals scored this season (two apiece) than
Washington (three).
2. The Caps have
averaged more penalty minutes per game (10:01) than any team in the Eastern
Conference except the Florida Panthers (11:38).
3. Washington has
taken fewer faceoffs (4,025) than all but two teams, Colorado (4,018) and
Carolina (3,922).
4. Washington has
outshot opponents 22 times this season.
Only Anaheim has done it fewer times (20).
5. The Caps do very
well when scoring first. Their .800
winning percentage is fourth in the league.
They should do it more often; their 24 wins rank tied for 14th.
The Peerless’ Players to Ponder
Winnipeg: Patrik Laine
Patrik Laine, more than any player in the game today (with
the possible exception of Toronto’s Auston Matthews), appears to have the
skill, hunger, and years ahead of him to challenge and eventually supplant Alex
Ovechkin as the league’s most dominant goal scorer. The second overall pick in the 2016 entry
draft comes into this game tied with Ovechkin for the league lead in goals
scored (40) and has more goals over the past two seasons (76) than any player
in the league. And he is coming into
this game on fire. Laine has goals in
his last five games (nine in all), including a hat trick in a 3-0 win over the
New York Rangers on March 6th, and in ten of his last 11 contests
(15 goals). He has goals in each of his
last seven road games (11 goals). He is a remarkably efficient shooter.
Among 301 skaters having recorded at least 100 shots on goal this
season, Laine is second in shooting percentage (20.4) to Vegas’ William
Karlsson (23.5). He has yet to record a
point in three career games against the Caps and is a minus-6.
Washington: Lars Eller
When Lars Eller fired the puck into an empty net late in the
Capitals’ 2-0 win in San Jose over the Sharks on Saturday, it was his 100th
career goal and snapped a five-game streak without one after putting together a
three-game goal streak. It was his 15th
goal this season, inching him closer to his career high of 16 he had with the
Montreal Canadiens in 2011-2012. It is
part of a consistent run of seasons for Eller who, if you consider the 14-goal
pace he was on in the abbreviated 2012-2013 season has finished with totals
between 12 and 16 goals in each of the last six seasons before this one. His contributions being of the secondary
scoring sort this season, it is helpful to note that when he did record a point
in a game this season, the Caps are 17-8-1, while they are just 21-14-6 when he
did not. And, as one might expect with
most players, he has been much more productive on home ice, going 11-10-21,
plus-10 at Capital One Arena (4-8-12, minus-7 on the road). Eller is 6-6-12, plus-4, in 18 career games
against Winnipeg.
In the end…
More than most teams the Caps have played this season, the
Jets are as complete a team as can be found in the NHL these days. What the Caps can’t let the Jets do is “get
to four.” When Winnipeg scores four or
more goals this season, they are 30-2-1.
They have just enough defense to keep from losing high-scoring
games. But those games are usually
blowouts for the Jets. At the other end
of the spectrum, the Jets have not lost a game when allowing one or no goals
(20-0-0), but when allowing two or more, they are just 21-18-9. So, for the Caps the task will be grinding
out a low scoring game against this club.
Washington has allowed two or fewer goals in each of their last three
home games, their longest such streak in the 2018 portion of the season (they
had a five-game home streak in December).
If they can make it four, they win.
Capitals 3 – Jets 2
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