The Peerless Prognosticator is ON THE AIR!!!
Welcome to an abbreviated version of the prognosto, this
being an extremely busy week for The Peerless in other facets of day to day
experience. The Washington Capitals are
hosting the New Jersey Devils tonight in the back half of a back-to-back set of
games in another Metropolitan Division skirmish. Let’s get right to our takes for the clubs…
1. New Jersey comes
into this game with a less-than-happy record for December (3-4-2). Worse, the Devils have not yet won a road
game in regulation this month, losing three times and beating the New York
Rangers in overtime. Their power play is
only 4-for-28 in their nine December games (14.3 percent), while their penalty
kill is 21-for-26 (80.8 percent).
2. Through Wednesday’s
games Washington had been the only club in the league that scored precisely as
many goals as it had allowed. Well, now
that odd result belongs to the Devils (actually, they share it with Phoenix). New Jersey has scored 2.36 goals per game (24th
in the league in scoring offense) and allowed 2.36 goals per game (ninth in
scoring defense).
3. New Jersey is the Boeing of NHL teams, at least in terms of one-goal
games. Their record is 7-7-7, just like
the wide-body aircraft.
4. Speaking of
wide-body aircraft, would you have believed that at age 41, the second oldest
skater in the league (to Teemu Selanne), that Jaromir Jagr would be leading the
Devils – or any NHL team – in goals scored?
He has 12 goals, one of only two members of the club to top ten goals
(Michael Ryder has 10). Jagr comes into
this game on a six-game points streak (1-7-8).
How impressive is that? He had
only one longer streak as a member of the Caps, an eight-game streak in the
2001-2002 season.
5. The Devils are a
solid possession team, ranking fifth overall in Corsi-for percentage in 5-on-5
close situations (53.8 percent) and eighth in Fenwick-for percentage (52.8
percent). Even while their record has
been so-so on December, their possession numbers remained solid – 55.9 Corsi-for
percentage in 5-on-5 close situations, 53.3 percent Fenwick-for.
1. ‘Tis the
Season. Nicklas Backstrom is celebrating
the holiday season by spreading good cheer.
He has 14 assists in his last seven games, 12 in his last five
contests. He now leads the league in
helpers with 33, one more than Sidgeni Malksby in Pittsburgh.
2. Since Backstrom
broke into the league in the 2007-2008 season, recording four or more assists
in a game has been done 115 times, nine of them by Backstrom. No one – not Sidney Crosby (four times), not
Ryan Getzlaf (five times), not Joe Thornton or Henrik Zetterberg (three times
apiece) – has done it as many times over that span of time.
3. By winning after
allowing the first goal last night, the Caps have climbed to seventh in the
league in winning percentage when allowing the first goal (.368). Given that only one team (Anaheim) has a
.500-plus record (.643), we’d just as soon the Caps not test this proposition
as frequently as they do, allowing the first goal 19 times through 35 games to
date (7-9-3 record).
4. Back to Backstrom…
Only two players – Sidney Crosby (21) and Patrick Kane (19) – have more points
scored against their respective division opponents than Backstrom (16). No player has more intra-divisional assists
(13).
5. Alex Ovechkin
likes his home cookin’. Of his 29 goals,
19 of them have been scored at Verizon Center (leads the league in home goals),
and 25 of his points have been recorded there (third in the league). As you might expect, Nicklas Backstrom does
not trail far behind. He is fourth in
home points scored, first in home assists recorded.
The Peerless’ Players to Ponder
New Jersey: Patrik
Elias
Patrik Elias seems to have been with the Devils since they
came out of Colorado to settle in the swamps of northern New Jersey. Actually, he took the ice for the Devils for
the first time back in 1995-1996 when he got one game of experience (no points
and a minus-1 in a 2-1 loss to Toronto on December 7, 1995, if you were
wondering). He is 16th among
active players in games played (1,118), eighth in points (952), tied for tenth
in assists (570), fifth in plus-minus (plus-193), fifth in game-winning goals
(78), tied for 12th in shorthanded goals (15). What might be forgotten but for Elias, his
family, and die-hard Devils fans is that he was a member of the all-rookie team
of 1997-1998 and was a first team all star in 2000-2001. Still, he is one of the most underrated
players of this era, overshadowed by the success the club has enjoyed over his
career in New Jersey (two Stanley Cups and two other trips to the finals). This season he is second on the club in
scoring and has points in six of his last eight games (2-6-8). He is 21-33-54 in 55 career games against
Washington.
Washington: John Carlson
Don’t look now, but John Carlson is now fifth in the league
in goal scoring among defensemen (seven).
He has, at least for the time being, taken over the trigger man duties
from Mike Green on the blue line. He
also is assuming a larger burden of power play time, logging 2:35 per game (to
Green’s 3:22). Carlson leads the team
and is tied for third in the league in power play goals (four), including the
power play tally he had last night in Carolina.
What had been curiously absent from Carlson’s game, from an offensive
perspective, is assists. He had 30
helpers in 82 games in his rookie season and had not really come close since
(he had 23 in his sophomore season and 16 last year in an abbreviated season, a
27-assist pace). He has seven helpers so
far this year, a 16-assist pace. It
might not matter much if that booming shot continues to develop. In 11 career games against New Jersey,
Carlson is 2-6-8.
In the end…
The Caps are 5-2-1 in December, 7-2-1 in their last ten
games. You might not like how they got
there, I might not like how they got there, but they got there. This isn’t the Beauty Contest Series in
college football, wins and losses are what matters, and the Caps have the fifth
best 10-game record in the league at the moment.
On the other side of the ice, the Devils are 3-4-2 in
December, 5-7-2 in their last 14 games.
If anything, it is their defense and goaltending letting them down, at
least by Devils standards. Over their
last 14 games the Devils have scored and allowed 37 goals, a 2.64 goals per
game scored and allowed. It is the
allowed number that is of concern here. Only
twice in nine games in December have the Devils allowed fewer than three goals
(not coincidentally, they won both games).
That’s the fault line upon which this game will be decided.
Capitals 4 – Devils 2