Thursday, August 22, 2019

A Little Piece of Capitals History to Freshen Your Day -- Seven Special Games

And, we’re back…

Let’s get back to our scribbles with a fun fact.  We noted on social media on Wednesday night that major league baseball's Washington Nationals scored double digits in runs for the fifth time in seven games and totaled 74 runs in that span.  By way of comparison, last year the Caps needed 22 games to amass 74 goals.  But then, someone asked what was the Caps' record for goals over a seven-game span.

Turns out, that record is 44 goals in seven games, set in Games 55-61 in the 1992-1993 season.  The seven-game stretch featured some odd history, not the least of which is the only instance in team history of recording ten or more goals in consecutive games and both of them on the road.  Here is how the team fared, game-by game:


And here is how the individual players performed over that span of seven games:


It is worth noting that while the Caps performed about as well on the power play over these seven games (21.4 percent) as they did over the course of the entire season (21.8 percent, fourth in the league), the penalty kill far under-performed in this seven-game stretch (74.4 percent) compared to their full season performance (82.9 percent, seventh in the league).

At an individual level, we took note of the following:
  • The seven goals Dmitri Khristich posted was almost a quarter of his total for the season (31 in 64 games).
  • Mike Ridley’s 13 points in seven games was almost a quarter of his total for the season (56 points in 84 games).
  • Kevin Hatcher was plus-11 in these games, but he was minus-18 in the other 76 games he played during the season.
  • Don Beaupre played about as well in five games minding the net in this stretch (3.20/.888) as he did over the course of the season (3.31/.882), but Jim Hrivnak struggled (3.93/.860 in two games) compared to his full season numbers (3.50/.877).

They don’t make streaks like this anymore.

Thanks to @Brian88847374 for asking the question and sparking this piece.