Record: 2-2-0
The seven-game winning streak that the Caps brought into
Week 10 ended on Sunday in particularly ugly fashion. Fourteen minutes into the second period, the
Caps had a 5-1 lead on the Anaheim Ducks.
The Ducks scored in the 15th minute, the first of what would
be five unanswered goals over less than 21 minutes to pin a 6-5 loss on the
Caps at Capital One Arena.
Two nights later, the Caps returned to the scene of their
greatest triumph in team history, T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, where they won
Game 5 of last spring’s Stanley Cup final and the first Stanley Cup in team
history. History did not repeat itself,
the Caps dropping a 5-3 decision and losing forward Tom Wilson to a concussion,
the victim of an outside-the-rules hit by Ryan Reaves.
It might have made for an ugly week, but the Caps clawed out
a 4-2 win in Arizona, their first win in regulation in the desert since 2006,
when the Caps took a 6-1 decision, and Alex Ovechkin scored what is known
simply as, “The Goal.”
Washington closed out the week in fine fashion with another
win over a playoff foe vanquished last spring, a 4-0 shutout of the Columbus
Blue Jackets that widened their division lead to three points through Week 10.
Offense: 4.00/game (season: 3.62/game, rank: 3rd)
One thing that the Caps have not had much trouble with
lately is scoring goals. They scored
four or more goals in three of the four games in Week 10, bring their total to eight
games with four or more goals in their last ten contests. As one would expect, that number
matters. The Caps are 14-2-2 when they
score four or more goals.
The Caps spread things around smartly in the four
games. Twelve players shared in the 16
goals scored, led by Alex Ovechkin and Jakub Vrana with three apiece. Ovechkin’s three goals propelled him into the
top spot in the goal scoring rankings through ten weeks (22). For Vrana, though, it might have been a statement
week. He had his first two-goal game of
the season in the loss to Vegas, the second multi-goal game of his career. The three goals for the week gave him nine
for the season and put him on a 25-goal pace.
All nine of his goals so far have been at even strength, second on the
team to Ovechkin (15).
Sixteen different skaters recorded points for the week, and
things were spread out here, too. Three
skaters finished with five points apiece in the four games – Ovechkin, Brett
Connolly, and Evgeny Kuznetsov. Connolly
has been hot in a quiet sort of way lately.
He finished the week with a four-game points streak and is 2-5-7 in his
last seven games. While he is a bit
behind his goal scoring pace of the past two seasons in which he finished with
15 goals, his 18 points to date put him on a pace to clear with ease his career
high (27 last season).
Defense: 3.25/game (season: 3.07/game, rank: 19th)
None of the seven teams playing four games in Week 10
allowed fewer shots on goal than the Caps (110). They allowed fewer than 30 shots in all four
games, tying their longest such streak of the season, Games 16-19 in
mid-November, when they allowed a total of 100 shots over four games. The odd thing about those four games is that
the Caps also had a 2-2-0 record.
It made for a good week in the underlying numbers, the Caps
finishing with a shot attempts-for percentage of 53.22, although there was an
odd inversion there. Usually, that
number is higher in situations in which a team is behind, owing to an increased
tendency to open things up to erase a deficit.
Not so with the Caps in Week 10.
It was only in situations in which they were behind that they finished
under 50 percent (47.62).
That the Caps lost their games when allowing six goals to
Anaheim and five to Vegas should not be surprising. Washington had not been a team that can
outscore its defensive lapses. Through
ten weeks they are 1-7-3 when allowing four or more goals, and the lone win
came in overtime (5-4 over Montreal on November 19th).
Goaltending: 3.04 / .890 / 1 SO (season: 2.88 / .909 / 2 SO)
As one would expect in a week when the four games split into
two losses and two wins, the goaltending followed along those lines. Braden Holtby got the call in the first two
games of the week and was not sharp.
Over the two games he was uniformly sluggish in all three periods,
posting save percentages of .875 in the first periods, .895 in the second
periods, and .647 in the third periods of the losses to Anaheim and Vegas.
Holtby gave way to Pheonix Copley in the third game of the
week against the Arizona Coyotes, and Copley was on his game.
He turned away 27 of 29 shots, but what made the performance noteworthy
in the week’s context was stopping all ten third period shots he faced (Holtby
stopped on 11 of 17 third period shots over the first two games of the
week). Copley continues to impress in a
backup role. Since allowing six goals on
36 shots in his first appearance this season , a 6-0 loss to the New Jersey
Devils on October 11th, he is 6-1-1, 2.57, .913, solid numbers for a
goalie in his first permanent tour as a backup netminder.
The night off worked for Holtby, who returned to the net
against the Columbus Blue Jackets and pitched a 28-save shutout in a 4-0
win. It was Holtby’s second shutout of
the season, his first since Opening Night against the Boston Bruins, after not
recording a single shutout in last year’s regular season. The shutout was the 34th of Holtby’s
career, bringing him within one of the franchise record held by Olaf Kolzig
(35).
Power Play: 1-for-13/7.7
percent (season: 25.3 percent, rank: 7th)
The power play struggled mightily in Week 10, making one
wonder what this week might have been had the power play even closely resembled
what it was in the early part of the season.
The 1-for-13 week was the Caps’ worst performance of the season in what
tied for their highest volume of power play chances for a single week (13 in
Week 6).
It might have been the worst performance of the Caps’ power
play over a single week in several seasons.
The 1-for-13 for the week was bad enough, but it was a well-deserved
result. The Caps managed only ten power
play shots on goal in a whopping 26:18 of power play ice time. The strangest thing about the power play,
though, might be that it has been nine games since Alex Ovechkin recorded a
power play goal (November 19th against Montreal). Tom Wilson had the only power play goal of
the week, that coming against Anaheim, on
what was his only power play shot on goal for the week. It bears noticing that with T.J. Oshie and
Tom Wilson out at the end of the week with injuries, two right-handed shot
players in the middle of the 1-3-1 power play are not available.
Penalty Killing: 11-for-15 / 73.3 percent (season: 77.6 percent,
rank: 21st)
After two weeks in which the Caps killed 20 of 21
shorthanded situations (95.2 percent), the Caps reverted to earlier season
form. That is not a good thing. But here was the week in microcosm. The Caps were awful killing penalties in the
first two games (5-for-9) but perfect in the last two games (6-for-6).
And, it was not as if the Caps didn’t get a lot of work
shorthanded. They spent 26:01 down a man
for the week and allowed 24 total shots on goal, half of those to the Vegas
Golden Knights in the 5-3 loss in the second game of the week. If there was an odd result this week it is
that neither the Caps nor the Arizona Coyotes registered a power play shot on
goal in the Caps’ 4-2 win.
Faceoffs: 108-for-237 / 45.6 percent (season: 48.2 percent,
rank: 24th)
It was not a great week for the Caps in the circle, not a
terrible one, either. In other words,
rather typical. What was disappointing
was being under 50 percent for the week in all three zones – 45.5 percent in
the offensive zone, 48.6 percent in the defensive zone, and 43.2 percent in the
neutral zone. Onlyi the 56.5 percent
effort against Anaheim (35-for-62) saved the week to any extent.
Of the four skaters to take at least ten draws for the week,
only Lars Eller was at 50 percent, and that is precisely where he finished on
23-for-46. Nicklas Backstrom and Evgeny
Kuznetsov finished under 50 percent in all three zones, not necessarily a surprising
result for Kuznetsov, but it was for Backstrom.
Goals by Period:
Another case of not being how you start, but how you
finish. In the first two games of the
week, the Caps finished horribly, allowing a total of seven goals in the third
periods of the two games while scoring only one of their own. It was not surprising that the results were
losses. The other two games were a
different story, the Caps shutting out both Arizona and Columbus in the third
periods of those games while scoring three goals of their own in the two
wins. That was the difference between a
mediocre week and a perfect one when one considers that over the first 40
minutes of games for the week, the Caps outscored the four opponents by an
aggregate 12-6 margin.
Year over Year:
The Caps are slightly ahead of their 2017-2018 pace. Squeezing
out points in extra time three times this season versus only once at this point
last season. Scoring is up more than 19
percent compared to this time last season, while scoring defense is roughly the
same. Shots taken and allowed show good
movement, up in the former and down in the latter from last year.
Despite the recent struggles on the power play, the Caps are
still ahead of last year’s conversion rate, but the penalty kill has slipped a
bit from last year’s unimpressive level of penalty kills.
The grittership numbers are, as they have been for much of the
season, a mixed bag. Faceoffs are down,
still, while the shot attempts at 5-on-5 have tilted a bit more in the Caps
favor. Hits are down, but blocked shots
are up, indicating a mixed bag on possession as both are indicators with the
opponent having the puck. Penalties are
down quite a bit, a good thing for a team that struggles with the penalty kill
as much as the Caps do.
In the end…
The glass-half-full interpretation of the week might be that
the Caps made something of it after a ghastly start, blowing a four-goal lead
in the second half of their game against Anaheim and unable to grab a win in
the desert against Vegas. They did beat
an Arizona team that has been quite an annoyance in recent years, winning for
the first time in regulation there in more than a decade. Then, they took advantage of a singularly
uninspiring effort by Columbus to keep the Blue Jackets' cannon silent. It was not a good week, but not a bad one,
either, and they remain atop the division.
That is something on which to build.
Three Stars:
- First Star: Alex Ovechkin (3-2-5, plus-2, 18 shots on goal, 32 shot attempts, finished week on 11-game points streak, three-game goal streak)
- Second Star: Jakub Vrana (3-1-4, plus-3, 8 SOG)
- Third Star: Evgeny Kuznetsov (1-4-5, plus-5, 8 SOG)
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