Sunday, January 12, 2020

Washington Capitals: That Was The Week That Was - Week 15

It would not be a stretch to say that Week 15 for the Washington Capitals was their worst week of the season.  No, it was not a losing week, but not for lack of effort.  They rallied from two goals down in the last minute of their first game of the week to tie the San Jose Sharks before winning in overtime, beat up on a weak Ottawa Senators team, and then lost to a pair of division rivals as a result of weak efforts and anemic offense.  The mid-winter grind appears to have struck the Caps.

Record: 2-2-0

It has been said that it is not how you start, but how you finish.  The Caps started the week well enough with a pair of wins, but they did it against teams that finished the week in the bottom third in the league in standings points, San Jose with 46 points (24th) and Ottawa with 39 (29th).  The two losses to end the week, to Philadelphia and New Jersey, extended a poor record of late against Metropolitan Division opponents. 

Those losses brought the Caps’ record to 3-7-0 against division rivals over their last ten contests, 1-3-0 on home ice, the lone win coming in overtime on December 27th against Columbus.  The Caps have not beaten a Metropolitan Division rival on home ice in regulation since they beat the New York Rangers, 5-2, on October 18th.  The Caps closed the week out of the top spot in the league standings for the first time since December 3rd, when they were second to the Boston Bruins by tiebreakers (even in standings points with Boston, but with the Bruins having a better points percentage).  The Caps ended the week with the same number of points (65) and same points percentage (.707) as Boston and St. Louis, but both the Bruins and the Blues have more wins in regulation, the next tiebreaker.


Offense: 3.50/game (season: 3.50/5th)

In some respects, the Caps were the Caps that fans have seen all season on offense, while in other respects there were gaps in Week 15.  There were Jakub Vrana and T.J. Oshie, two vital elements of the Caps’ attack, posting four and three goals, respectively for the week, accounting for half of the Caps’ total.  Lars Eller, who has been quite productive of late in a variety of ways, scoring a pair of goals, and Alex Ovechkin getting a pair of goals of his own to tie Teemu Selanne for 11th place on the all-time NHL goal scoring list (684 goals apiece).  Nicklas Backstrom, Radko Gudas, and Nic Dowd rounded out the goal scorers. 

Missing, however, were Tom Wilson and Evgeny Kuznetsov among the forwards.  Wilson has been in a dry spell of late, his current streak of games without a goal up to five.   He has one goal in his last 11 games and two in his last 15.  Kuznetsov has been more streaky.  He is without a goal in four games after posting four in three games.  Before that he had one goal in 12 games.

There was balance in the points, though.  Of the 18 skaters to dress in Week 15, 16 of them had points, and the distribution was what was noticeable.  Vrana led the team with five points, but three players had four (Oshie, Backstrom, and John Carlson), while another four players had three points (Eller, Wilson, Kuznetsov, and Michal Kempny).  Garnet Hathaway and Nick Jensen were the only players to be blanked on the score sheet for the week.  For Jensen, the drought is severe.  He is now up to 38 consecutive games without a point.  Hathaway’s dry spell is not as severe, but he is up to six games without a point.

Defense: 3.25/game (season: 2.96/12th)

The Caps held all four opponents in Week 15 to fewer than 30 shots, extending an impressive amount of stinginess when it comes to allowing shots.  Washington has allowed fewer than 30 shots in 12 of their last 13 games through Week 15, the only club to top that threshold being the Carolina Hurricanes, who logged 41 shots on goal in a 4-3 loss to the Caps on January 3rd. Since Thanksgiving, no team in the league has been stingier than the Caps in allowing shots, their 27.4 shots allowed per game being fewest in the league over that span.

Washington was not quite as impressive on the defensive side of 5-on-5 shot attempts, but were decent nonetheless.  They allowed 176 shot attempts at fives, fifth fewest among the ten teams to play in four games this week.  It is part of an extended good run in this area for the Caps, whose 815 shot attempts at fives overall are the third-fewest in the league since Thanksgiving.  It has helped contribute to a plus-110 shot attempt differential over that period, the sixth-best differential in the league.

Goaltending: 2.75 / .893 (season: 2.76 / .906)

There is a fair amount to unpack in this category in Week 15.  First, there is the continued fine play on the part of Ilya Samsonov, who stopped 26 of 27 shots in his lone appearance for the week, beating Ottawa, 6-1.  It brought his record over his last eight appearances to 7-0-0 (one no-decision), 1.83, .932.  He finished the week second in the league among rookie goaltenders in wins with 12 (New Jersey’s MacKenzie Blackwood has (14), second in goals against average with 2.24 (Florida’s Chris Driedger has a 2.16 GAA), and fifth in save percentage (.921).

Then there was Braden Holtby, who had a real “donut” of a week.  He stopped 31 of 34 first period shots in three games for a respectable .912 save percentage.  He was perfect in his three third periods, stopping all 17 shots he faced.  But oh, those second periods.  He allowed at least one goal in each of the three second periods he played and stopped only 16 of 23 shots (.696 save percentage).  Not every goal is the goalie’s fault, but, like pitchers in baseball with earned run average, it is his goals against average and save percentage that gets the record, and he is the one who records the wins and the losses.  Whether it is his play, the play of the team in front of him, or a combination of the two, Holtby is in a dark place at the moment.  In his last ten appearances, he is 3-7-0, 3.59, .870, and he has allowed a shorthanded goal in two straight games and three of his last five contests.  Since Thanksgiving, 40 goalies have logged at least 500 minutes.  Of that group, Holtby ranks 34th in goals against average (3.27) and dead last in save percentage (.882).

Power Play: 1-for-12/8.3 percent (season: 21.0 percent/12th)

Week 15 was another in a continuing series of struggling weeks for the Caps, ending the week 8-for-56 in their last six weeks covering 18 games.  Worse, in Week 15 the Caps had a net power play of -8.3 percent, their one power play goal offset by two shorthanded goals allowed.  They were the only team in the league to allow two shorthanded goals this week and the only team to finish in negative territory in net power play.  The Caps changed things up a bit by spreading the power play time out as the week wore on.  When the week ended, seven forwards averaged more than two minutes per game in power play ice time, Jakub Vrana (2:19 per game) and Lars Eller (2:16) being somewhat new to this level of participation.

It was a lackluster power play at the next level as well.  The Caps managed only 14 shots on goal in 21:28 of power play ice time, Alex Ovechkin accounting for five of them, Jakub Vrana for another three (and the only goal).  Put it all together, and that 8-for-56 power play (14.3 percent) is the second-worst power play in the league (Columbus: 12.5 percent).


Penalty Killing: 6-for-8/75.0 percent (season: 83.8 percent/4th)

The Caps matched their penalty killing performance in Week 14 with a 6-for-8 week.  In the glass-half-full category, the Caps had only those eight shorthanded situations to face in four games.  On the other hand, the four teams they faced in Week 15 were among the worst power play teams in the league, ranking 19th (Philadelphia), 25th (San Jose), 30th (New Jersey), and 31st (Ottawa) at week’s end.

But back to the first hand, the good part.  The Caps did allow San Jose two power play goals on their first two chances in the first game of the week, but here is the really good part.  The Caps not only shutout opponents on the power play the rest of the week (6-for-6), but they shut them out on shots.  San Jose did not record one on either of their last two power play chances in the opening game of the week, and the Caps ran the table in the other three games, denying any of the three opponents so much as a single shot on goal in eight shorthanded minutes of play.  If there was one thing in this week to build on, the penalty kill to finish the week might have been it.


Faceoffs: 99-for-228/43.4 percent (season: 48.9 percent/22nd)

The Caps just are not a very good faceoff team.  They are inconsistent at best.  In four games this week they were over 50 percent only against San Jose (31-for-58/53.4 percent) and under 45 percent in the other three games.  They lost all three zones for the week, topping 45 percent only in the offensive end (40-for-88/45.5 percent).  Since Thanksgiving, the Caps have the fifth-worst faceoff performance in the league (47.2 percent) and second-worst in the new year (42.3 percent).  Faceoff woes might be contributing to poor power play performance.  Their 34.8 percent wins on power plays in the first five games of the new year is worst in the league, and that’s too much time chasing down pucks when they could be setting up their attack.

Individually, Nicklas Backstrom (32-for-60/53.3 percent) and Lars Eller (22-for-41/53.7 percent) were the only Caps taking at least ten draws to finish over 50 percent for the week.  No Capital, regardless of the number of draws taken, finished at 50 percent or better in the defensive zone.


Goals by Period:

Week 15 was a week in which the Caps suffered from poor starts, posting a negative goal differential in both the first and second periods of games.  Their third periods look better for the furious last-minute comeback against San Jose in which they scored a pair of goals, a comeback that qualifies as historic

The two first period goals the Caps scored for the week are the first two goals they have recorded in the opening periods of the new year to date, tied with Columbus for fewest in the league.  And even that paltry production has not helped.  The Caps have yet to take a lead into the first intermission through five games in January.  The Caps have not held a lead at the first intermission since they took a 2-1 lead after 20 minutes in their 6-3 win over New Jersey on December 20th.  They have not taken a lead into the first intermission on home ice since Thanksgiving, a streak that is now at ten home games.


Year-over-Year:

The Caps continue to be better in most respects than last year’s team at a similar point in the schedule, but the differences are narrowing.  The best thing that might be said is that this club is not merely better than last year’s in terms of wins, but it is only the third team in franchise history to post 30 or more wins in their first 46 games.  The 206-2017 club had 31 wins in 46 games, while the 2015-2016 team had 35 wins it its first 46 games.

The flip side of that is that even with the recent mediocre record, this year’s Caps team has the third-fewest losses in regulation through 46 games (11) in team history, the 2016-2017 team having nine and the 2015-2016 team having eight.  The differential statistics – goals for and against, shots for and against, and 5-on-5 shot attempts for and against – continue to favor this year’s team significantly.  One would think, or at least hope, that a club as skilled as this will shake off the doldrums if the underlying numbers such as these continue to point in a positive direction.


In the end…

Overall, it was quite a disappointing week.  The Caps were fortunate, if not outright lucky, to get out of it with a .500 record.  Coming back from two goals down in the last minute of a game is not a formula one can count on, and while the win over Ottawa and the loss to Philadelphia (a superb home team) could be in the category of “expected,” the loss to the Devils to end the week was arguably the Caps worst game – effort-wise and performance-wise – of the season.  The Caps have much work to do…get the power play untracked, have better starts to games, improve their performance on home ice, get Braden Holtby back on his game.  With three division rivals on the schedule in Week 16, their last action before their bye/All-Star Game break, sooner rather than later for those improvements is the prescription.

Three Stars:
  • First Star: Jakub Vrana (4-1-5, plus-1, 14 shots on goal, 18 shot attempts, first power play goal of the season, reached 20 goals for second consecutive season)
  • Second Star: Radko Gudas (1-1-2, plus-3 (tied for team lead), one game-winning goal, 12 shots on goal (led all defensemen), 12 hits (led all defensemen))
  • Third Star: Ilya Samsonov (1-0-0, 1.00, .963)

Captain rates the week…













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