The Peerless Prognosticator is ON THE AIR!!!
The Washington Capitals return home on Tuesday night after a
listless three game road trip in which they failed to secure a standings
point. The losing streak, which has now
reached five games and counting, means that extraordinary measures might have
to be taken to change the range, reverse the curse, flip the slip. And no one knows more about such things than
retired major league baseball superstar, Pedro Cerrano. Pedro, tanks for stopping by.
“Peerless, my great and good friend. How’r you doing?”
Fine, Pedro, and I hope things are well with you.
“So good. You tell me
the Capitals are on a losing streak.”
Right you are my friend, and things are getting
desperate. Five losses in a row,
dropping in the standings, can’t buy a goal, and when they do score, they seem
to get them disallowed for this reason or that.
“You know what problem is, don’t you?”
Well, no…that’s kind of why I asked you to stop by.
“Sticks, they are sick. They cannot make slap shot. Missed shot, blocked shot, they do it very
much. Slap shot, sticks are afraid. I ask Jobu to come, take fear from sticks.
I offer him cigar, rum. Tim
Horton’s. He will come.”
You know, I heard that they might think about taking Sidney
Crosby as their savior instead of fooling around with all this stuff.
“Crosby, I like him very much… Well, no I don’t. No one does.
But he no help with slap shot."
You trying to say Sidney Crosby can't make a slap shot?
Cheerless: "Yo,
bartender, Jobu needs a refill."
“Ha, very funny. Is
very bad to steal Jobu's Tim Horton’s. Is very bad. Maybe problem is what my
great and good friend Isuro Tanaka said… ‘they have no mah-bles.’”
Mah-bles? They have
no mah-bles?
“You know..mah-bles…huevos.”
Well, if not, they’d better find them, and quick!
The immediate task at hand while the Caps search for their
“mah-bles” is to stop the bleeding. And
that means taking a bite out of the Ottawa Senators at Verizon Center Tuesday
night. It will not be easy. First, Ottawa has won the last six meetings
between the clubs. That includes a pair
of wins this season, a 6-4 loss to the Senators on the day before Thanksgiving
at Verizon Center and a 3-1 loss in Ottawa on December 30th. The Caps have not defeated Ottawa since they
took a 5-3 decision in Ottawa on December 7, 2011.
Second, the Senators come into this game on a 6-1-2 run over
their last nine games. They have
outscored their opponents by a 26-24 margin over that span. The narrow goals scored/goals allowed spread
reflects the fact that the Senators played to six one-goal decisions in that
span with a record of 4-0-2. In
decisions settled by more than one goal Ottawa is 2-1, including the 3-1 win
over the Caps on December 30th.
Erik Karlsson is once more doing what he did to win the
Norris Trophy as the league’s top defenseman in 2012. His 1-8-9 scoring in the Senators’ recent
6-1-2 run has propelled him to the top of the scoring rankings among NHL
defensemen (11-35-46). There is a
certain resemblance to another offensive defenseman of yesteryear with whom
Caps fans might be familiar. Those 46
points are accompanied by a minus-12 rating (including minus-2 in this recent
streak of Ottawa good fortune). On the
power play, though, he has been dominant.
Karlsson leads all NHL defensemen in overall points (21) and has a wide
edge in power play assists (19) over second place Duncan Keith (15) of the
Chicago Blackhawks. Karlsson is 2-11-13
in 14 career games against Washington.
On the forward lines, Kyle Turris has been the trigger man of note in the 6-1-2
run for the Senators. With seven goals
in those nine games Turris has more than a quarter of the team’s output in that
span. And, with those seven goals he has
doubled his goal output for the season and established a career high in his
seventh season. Turris had a four-game
goal scoring streak broken in the Senators’ last game, a 4-1 loss to the New
York Rangers (Rangers seem to work well with that score lately). He is 3-2-5 in seven career contests against
the Caps.
Here is how the teams compare, numbers-wise...
1. In Ottawa’s recent
run of good fortune the power play has not been an especially important part of
the success. In their 6-1-2 run the
Senators are 4-for-26 with the man advantage (15.4 percent). The penalty kill is another story. In those same nine games Ottawa is 19-for-22
(86.4 percent). They are 6-0-0 in games
in which they were perfect in killing penalties, 0-1-2 when they were not.
2. Part of the trick
on the penalty kill has been in not having to kill penalties. In their last nine games the Senators have
had three instances in which they faced one or no shorthanded situations. On two other occasions they faced only two
shorthanded situations.
3. Ottawa has spread
things around lately on offense.
Fourteen players shared in the goal scoring over these last nine
games, 27 goals in all. Nineteen players
had points.
4. Only one team –
San Jose, with 54 – has scored more first period goals than the 51 scored by
the Senators in the opening period. That
might be a good thing, except that only Edmonton has allowed more first period
goals (53) than the Senators (52) so far this season.
5. Ottawa comes into
this game in the middle third of the possession statistics – 15h in Fenwick-for
percentage in 5-on-5 close score situations, 11th in Corsi-for
percentage . The ranking difference
reflects that Ottawa is not your big shot blocking team, the difference between
Corsi (which includes blocks) and Fenwick (which does not). The Senators are 27th in blocked
shots in the league, last in the league in blocked shots in road games.
1. The Caps have
scoring problems in the micro and macro senses when it comes to this game. In the macro sense, the Caps have been held
to one goal in six of their last 11 games and have just 22 goals overall in
those 11 contests. In the micro sense,
the Caps have been held to 11 goals in their six-game losing streak to the
Senators. It is a rapid current against
which the Caps are swimming upstream.
2. Strange thing,
this six-game losing streak to Ottawa.
The Caps have only 11 goals in those games, and those came from 10
different players. Only John Carlson has
two. Two players – Mathieu Perreault and
Mike Ribeiro – are no longer with the club.
Twenty different players have recorded points in those six games, Jason
Chimera leading with three (all assists).
Five of those players are no longer with the club. In addition to Perreault and Ribeiro, there
is Alexander Semin, Matt Hendricks, and Wojtek Wolski.
3. The Caps have
scored a lone goal in four of their last five games and six of their last
11. They have scored one or fewer goals
in 13 of 49 games this season. Last
year, that was nine times in 48 games.
4. Playing within the
rules has been a challenge for the Caps.
Washington has taken more minor penalties (196) than all but five
teams. Only three teams have been docked
with more penalty minutes per game than the Caps (13.0). Perhaps uncharacteristically, the Caps are
tied for fifth in the league in fighting majors (27). Last year, the Caps ranked 28th
with only 16 fighting majors, and they were 26th the year before
that. The Caps have not ranked in the
top-ten since they finished ninth in fighting majors (40) in 2006-2007. That year included Alex Ovechkin’s first
fight in the NHL, Buffalo’s Paul Gaustad being his dance partner.
5. For you possession
mavens, the game against the Rangers on Sunday featured one – count ‘em, one –
Corsi/Fenwick event at 5-on-5 tied situations.
Yeah, that game was over early.
The Peerless’ Players to Ponder
Ottawa: Craig Anderson
Goaltender Craig Anderson has had two quite different seasons. In the first, covering 17 appearances through
November, Anderson was borderline awful
He was 6-8-2, 3.52, .894. It was
a far cry from his 1.69 goals against average and .941 save percentage that he
posted in 2012-2013. Then the calendar
flipped to December. Starting with a
solid 30-save performance in a 4-2 win over the Florida Panthers on December 3rd,
Anderson is 9-2-4 in his last 15 decisions.
It is not a case of suddenly finding his form. He has merely gone from that borderline awful
to decent. In 16 appearances since the
start of December is has a goals against average of 2.86 and a save percentage
of .909. He has, however, received 3.20
goals per game in offensive support in his 15 decisions since December 1st. Anderson is 2-0-0 against the Capitals this
season (2.50, .927) and is 10-5-1 against Washington for his career (2.43,
.923, one shutout).
Washington: Braden Holtby
OK, kid, it’s you’re net again. Or so it would seem. With Michal Neuvirth in good health again and
playing reasonably well, with Philipp Grubauer being reassigned to Hershey, and
with Holtby looking sharper than he did in weeks in stopping 17 of 18 shots in
what was, admittedly, a mop-up operation against the Rangers on Sunday, Holtby
can re-assume his place as the number one netminder for the Caps. Until he isn’t. He is going to have to be sharp to help stop
the bleeding the Caps have experienced in the standings the last month. It is likely to be a challenge. Holtby is 0-2-0 in two career appearances
against the Senators (3.55, .909), one of those losses coming this season when
he allowed five goals on 40 shots in a 6-4 loss to the Senators on November 27th.
Keys:
1. Start better,
better start. All those goals scored and
allowed by the Senators in the first period of games has made for an unhealthy
mix. Ottawa has the fourth worst record
in the league when leading after one period (11-5-3). The good thing here is that they do not lead
often (19 times in 49 games). On the
other hand, they don’t trail much, either (16 times with a 2-10-4 record).
2. Back to
basics. When in a hole, stop
digging. That means no soft pass in your
own zone (Dmitry Orlov, this means you), no high risk through the middle pass
through your own zone (pick a defenseman), no odd drop passes, behind the back
passes, or any of the other fancy nonsense that leads to 2-on-1 or 3-on-2 rushes
the other way.
3. Don’t shoot just
to shoot. Craig Anderson has a strange
profile in his shots faced outcomes.
When facing more than 30 shots he is 12-4-5. When facing 30 or fewer shots, he is
3-6-1. Make him work, but be smart about
it. Lobbing grenades from outside is
likely to end up being lot of duds. Get
pucks in tight, make him fight for saves.
In the end…
When the Caps took it in the teeth at Madison Square Garden
on Sunday, it was reminiscent of their enduring the same fate at Madison Square Garden in the midst of
their eight-game losing streak in 2010.
In their next game that season they manned up and played the Anaheim
Ducks close before dropping a 2-1 overtime decision. Then they played the Bruins tight in Boston,
almost coming back from three-goals down in the first period before losing,
3-2. Then they ended their losing streak
– against these same Ottawa Senators – and took off on a 6-0-2 run, including a
3-1 win in the 2011 Winter Classic in Pittsburgh.
Things can turn, but sometimes it is slow to come. The team might “play” better before the
results manifest themselves in the standings.
The Caps had a string of fine possession efforts with nothing to show
for it before being jumped by the Rangers on Sunday. It is time to turn that kind of fundamental
play into wins.
Capitals 3 – Senators 1