The Peerless Prognosticator is ON THE AIR!!!
Fresh off their 3-2 freestyle competition win over the
Detroit Red Wings on Tuesday, the Washington Capitals head south to start a
three-game road trip with a contest against the Florida Panthers at BB&T
Center in Sunrise, Florida.
For the Capitals it will be their second and final visit with
the Panthers this season (the teams face one another on February 2nd
in Washington). The Capitals won the
first meeting in south Florida this season, a 2-1 overtime win on Hallowe’en on
what was described by Caps play-by-play announcer Joe Beninati as a “magical”
play…
The win capped off a fine opening month for the Caps, who
finished October with an 8-2-0 record.
They have hardly slowed down since, going 11-3-2 since that meeting and 7-0-1
in their last eight games.
Meanwhile the Panthers have climbed to within a point of a
top-eight spot in the Eastern Conference on the strength of a 5-2-0 record over
their last seven games. That record
would look a lot better if the losses were not a pair of 4-2 defeats in their last
two games, losing at New Jersey to the Devils and dropping the next game – the Panthers’
most recent – to the Ottawa Senators on home ice last Tuesday.
Still, the 5-2-0 record is a big improvement over the
Panthers’ 8-9-4 start to the season. In
these most recent seven games the Panthers did not build a winning record with
offense. Only once in those seven
contests did they score more than two goals (a 3-1 win over St. Louis on
December 1st), and they scored 14 in all. They did do it with defense and
goaltending. The Panthers limited their
seven opponents to an average of 25.9 shots per game, and the goalies did the
rest. In allowing just 14 goals overall,
Roberto Luongo was 4-2-0, 1.99, .924, and Al Montoya stopped 22 of 23 shots in
his lone appearance in this stretch, a 2-1 Gimmick win over the Columbus Blue
Jackets last Friday. Given Luongo’s
considerable body of work against the Caps (36 games, 20-10-2 record, 2.29 GAA,
.926 save percentage, two shutouts), he would seem likely to get the call for the
Panthers in this game.
Florida is another of those teams that has a glass half
full/glass half empty character to their offense in recent games. They have few goals (14 in their last seven
games), but they do have balance. Ten
different Panthers share in the goal total, four of them – Jonathan Huberdeau,
Reilly Smith, Derek MacKenzie, and Brandon Pirri each with a pair.
Jonathan Huberdeau finally gave some glimpses last season at
what his potential might be as a former third-overall draft pick (2011). He posted 15 goals and 54 points in 79 games,
the 54 points leading the club. This season
the goals have been harder to come by; he has only three in 28 games. But he is still averaging more than half a
point a game (15 in 28 games). In this
5-2-0 stretch for the Panthers, Huberdeau is recording points every other
game. Extending the pattern would put
him in line to record a point against the Caps, but patterns do not last in
perpetuity. Huberdeau is 2-3-5, minus-3, in 11 career
games against Washington.
Derek MacKenzie is at the other end of the development path
from Huberdeau. A former fifth-round
pick of the Atlanta Thrashers, the 34-year old forward is with his third club,
spending the last two seasons in Florida after seven years with the Columbus
Blue Jackets after four seasons with the Thrashers. Offense has not been a feature of his
game. In 417 career games, MacKenzie has
just 39 goals. He is one of 13 active
forwards with more than 400 career regular season games played and fewer than
40 goals. He is a decent faceoff
competitor (55.1 percent, tops on the club) and will get tough defensive
assignments (he has been on ice for only nine goals against in 28 games). He is 2-1-3, minus-3, in 11 career games
against the Capitals.
Here is how the teams stack up against one another overall:
1. Winning and power
play success have not gone together in the Panthers’ 5-2-0 run. The power play is 1-for-16 (6.3 percent) over
its last seven games. The penalty kill
has been a different story. Florida was
perfect in the first six games of this stretch (16-for-16) before giving up two
in five chances last Tuesday in the 4-2 loss to Ottawa.
2. Florida has shown
a certain adeptness for scoring first in games that might be surprising for a
club on the outside looking in at the playoff eight. The Panthers scored first in 16 of 28 games
to date. Their problem has been sustaining
the momentum. They rank 16th
in winning percentage in game in which they score first (.688 with a record of
11-3-2).
3. It gets a lot worse
for the Panthers when they allow the first goal. While difficulty in scoring first is a decent
predictor of a lack of success in the NHL overall, Florida pushes those limits. The Panthers are 2-8-2 when the opponent
scores first, a winning percentage (.167) that ranks 29th of 30
teams.
4. No team has more
players on its roster older than 35 to have appeared in ten or more games than
the Panthers, who have four – Jaromir Jagr, Shawn Thornton, Willie Mitchell,
and Brian Campbell. Three of them (Jagr,
Mitchell, and Campbell) average more than 15 minutes a game, and Campbell leads
the team in average ice time (20:59).
5. Florida is not an
especially effective possession team.
Their Corsi-for percentage at 5-on-5 overall (46.8/ranked 26th),
score adjusted (46.9/28th), and in close score situations (46.4/T-25th)
are all bottom-five in the league (numbers from war-on-ice.com).
1. For a while, Alex
Ovechkin could not find the back of the net on the power play with a map and a
flashlight. He had just one power play
goal in his first 19 games this season.
However, his last three goals scored have come on the man
advantage. He has five goals in his last
nine games, inching slightly closer to a 50-goal pace overall (currently a
42-goal pace).
2. Nicklas Backstrom
went consecutive games without a point on Hallowe’en and in his next contest on
November 3rd. It is the last
time he has gone consecutive games without a point. Backstrom is 5-10-15 in his last 15 games and
comes into this game on a personal
six-game points streak (2-5-7).
3. Six teams have two
defensemen with more than ten assists, and the Capitals are one of them. John Carlson (15) and Matt Niskanen (11) are
the Capitals’ entries.
4. The Caps are the
only team in the league to have allowed 20 or fewer goals in each of the first
(18), second (17), and third periods (20) of games.
5. Washington still
has not done much to improve their possession numbers on their eight-game
points streak. Their Corsi-for numbers
are teetering on the 50-percent line: 48.2 percent overall, 50.1 percent in
score adjusted, and 48.0 in close score situations (numbers from war-on-ice.com).
The Peerless’ Players to Ponder
Florida: Jaromir Jagr
When Jaromir Jagr was in the midst of a five-game points
streak late last month he was a fine story of achievement well into his 40’s. He has just two points in his last six games
and does not have a goal in his last eight contests. What
is more, the shots are drying up. He has
two or fewer shots on goal in his last eight games, and only once in his last
18 games (24 shots on goal overall). At
the age of 43 it would be reasonable to wonder if the run is starting to come
to an end. His possession numbers have
been uneven, too. Overall, his score
adjusted Corsi-for percent at 5-on-5 is 50.8.
On an individual game basis his Corsi-for/Relative has been all over the
place with seven of nine games in negative territory followed up by seven of
eight in positive territory. Part of it
is that Florida is still a developing team, but those numbers will bear
watching in the weeks and months ahead, too.
Jagr has played almost a full season’s worth of career regular season
games against the Caps (78 in fact) and is 30-60-90, plus-14.
Washington: Karl
Alzner
It is a good thing Karl Alzner has been given the green light
to play on Thursday night after sitting out a practice on Wednesday. Alzner, who has appeared in 402 consecutive
games for the Caps, has two career goals against Florida. It might not sound like a lot, but he does
not have more against any other NHL team (he also has two against the Boston
Bruins and the New Jersey Devils). But
seriously, with Brooks Orpik having missed 12 games with a lower body injury
and who is expected to be out for the foreseeable future, having Alzner on the
blue line taking his usual ice time workload and defensive responsibilities is
important for the Caps to maintain the success they have had, even in Orpik’s
absence. Alzner is 2-4-6 (the point
total also a high among NHL teams he has faced), plus8, in 27 career games
against the Panthers.
In the end…
The Panthers are no push over, especially in Florida, where
the Caps and Panthers have played in seven straight one-goal games dating back
to February 2012, four of them settled in extra time. The positive spin on that is that the Caps have
a 5-0-2 record in those games. If
Roberto Luongo starts in goal it will be his first appearance against the Caps
this season. The last time the Caps
faced him in Florida, this happened…
Let’s not have a repeat performance.
Capitals 3 – Panthers 2
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