The Peerless Prognosticator is ON THE AIR!!!
No rest for the wicked, or more precisely, the filthy, as in
the freestyle goal scorers in the Washington Capitals’s 3-2 Gimmick win over
the New Jersey Devils yesterday. T.J.
Oshie and Alex Ovechkin made sure the Caps had a happy Saturday, but now they
return home to face the Philadelphia Flyers on Sunday at Verizon Center.
The Caps dropped a 4-3 overtime decision to the Flyers on
January 27th and will be looking for a measure of payback. The Flyers come into Washington having played
a Gimmick game of their own yesterday, dropping a 3-2 decision to the New York
Rangers in Philadelphia. The loss
snapped a three-game winning streak that started with that win over the Caps 11
days ago.
In those four games, the Flyers outscored their opponents by
a 16-10 margin, the 16-goal output being a bit unusual for a club ranked 25th
in scoring offense (2.38 goals per game).
The Flyers are led in goal scoring over those four games by Wayne
Simmonds (four), but he was hit with a match penalty in yesterday’s game
against the Rangers for intent to injure Ryan McDonagh. The match penalty means Simmonds is suspended
until the Department of Player Safety issues a ruling on his actions on the
ice.
That leaves Brayden Schenn as the top goal scorer over the
last four games (three) who is likely to take the ice this afternoon. Schenn has become something of a reliable
half-point a game player for the Flyers, having hit or topped that threshold in
each of the last four seasons, including this one. He has been an even more productive player of
late, going 4-3-7 over his last six games.
Schenn is 2-5-7, minus-3, in 17 career games against the Caps.
Shayne Gostisbehere has more than twice as many points from
the blue line than any other Flyer defenseman, and he has done it in just 32
games. He is also leading all rookie
defensemen in goals (nine), assists (17), and points (26), despite playing in
20 fewer games (32) than the second-place rookie scorer among defensemen (St.
Louis’ Colton Parayko: 6-13-19). He is
1-5-6 in the Flyers’ last four games to lead their defense in scoring,
including a pair of assists in the 4-3 win over the Caps on January 27th
in his only career appearance against Washington.
Michal Neuvirth won that overtime decision over the Caps 11
days ago, and since Steve Mason got the call in yesterday’s loss to the
Rangers, he might have been called upon again for this game. However, he is out with a groin injury, and
Anthony Stolarz was recalled from Lehigh
Valley in the AHL to fill in. He has not
yet appeared in an NHL game.
That might leave things up to Mason in the end. He stopped 26 of 28 shots in the shootout
loss yesterday. He has been solid of
late, going 4-2-2, 2.22, .932, with a shutout over his last eight
appearances. He is 7-4-2, 2.83, .904,
with two shutouts in 14 career appearances against the Capitals.
Here is how the teams compare overall…
1. The Flyers have allowed the second-highest number of
shots per game in the league (32.4).
2. No team has taken
fewer leads into the first intermission than the Flyers. They are 7-1-0 in those instances, but eight
leads at the first intermission is far behind Toronto, with the second-fewest
instances (12).
3. Not that the
Flyers do all that well when they score first, either. Their .640 winning percentage in such games
(16-6-3) ranks just 23rd in the league.
4. If the Caps’ power
play is going to get well, it might come at Philadelphia’s expense. The Flyers
rank 24th in road penalty killing efficiency (78.5 percent).
5. Philadelphia is
not an especially good team on the road in terms of possession, but neither are
they especially bad. Their 49.2 percent
Corsi-for at 5-on-5 overall ranks 12th in the league (numbers from war-on-ice.com).
1. Winter Storm Jonas
seems to have swept the “power” out of the Caps’ power play. Before the storm hit, the Caps had been on a
10-for-29 run over nine games (34.5 percent).
Since the storm, and the postponed games against Anaheim and Pittsburgh,
the Caps are 0-for-15 in four contests.
2. Penalty killing has
not been a lot better lately. The Caps
allowed a power play goal to the New Jersey Devils yesterday, making it six
games in their last eight in which they allowed at least one power play goal. Their penalty kill over those eight games is
21-for-28 (75.0 percent). Their special
teams index over their last four games (power play efficiency plus penalty kill
efficiency) is 69.2.
3. The Caps come into
this game as a top-ten team in goals scored in each of the three regulations
periods, 43 in the first period (6th), 55 in the second period (55),
and 62 in the third period (2nd).
4. The Caps remain
the only team in the league to have allowed 40 or fewer goals in each of the
three regulation periods (36 in the first, 33 in the second, and 40 in the
third).
5. Your odd Corsi
fact for the day… the Caps are 9-1-1 in the last 11 games in which they were
below 50 percent in Corsi-for overall (numbers from war-on-ice.com).
This is not likely a sustainable outcome.
The Peerless’ Players to Ponder
Philadelphia: Jakub Voracek
Jakub Voracek scored the game-winning overtime goal against
the Caps on January 27th.
Starting with that game, Voracek is 2-6-8 to lead the Flyers in overall
points during that span. He has closed
to within two points (8-34-42) of Claude Giroux (16-28-44) for the team lead in
total scoring, and his 34 assists is tied for seventh in the league
overall. He comes into this game on a
six-game points streak (3-8-11) and is 7-20-27 in his last 21 games. He is 11-7-16, plus-7, in 23 career games
against the Caps.
Washington: Andre
Burakovsky
When Andre Burakovsky nudged a loose puck past New Jersey
Devils goalie Cory Schneider in yesterday’s win, it was his fifth consecutive
game with a goal. Until this streak he
had not had consecutive games with a goal in his young career. It is not just his goal scoring that make him
one of the hottest players in the league.
He has points in six straight games and in eight of his last nine
contests (6-6-12), four multi-point games among them. That stretch included a ten-shots on goal
effort in the Caps’ 5-2 loss to the Florida Panthers five days ago, a career
high in shots. He is 2-0-2, plus-1, in
four career games against the Flyers.
In the end…
Both teams are coming off trick shot games yesterday. The Caps have the advantage of having slept
in their own beds last night and have some incentive to repay the Flyers for
the overtime loss they suffered in the last week in January. They will be facing a team that has been hot
at the offensive end of the ice in recent games, and this could put a premium
on the Caps finding a way out of their power play slump. The Caps have been a particularly resilient
team of late, though, fighting off power play issues and unimpressive
possession numbers to chug along with a 4-1-1 record in their last six
games. Good teams find a way to get
things done when some of the particulars aren’t going so well. The Caps, through those speed bumps and
potholes, have been a pretty good team.
Capitals 4 – Flyers 2
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