The Peerless Prognosticator is ON THE AIR!!!
The Washington Capitals end their longest hiatus of the
season to date (four off days) when they take the ice against the New York
Islanders on Thursday night at Verizon Center.
The Caps will enter the game winners in two of their last three games
and four of their last six, but they will be trying to avoid losses in
regulation in consecutive games for the first time since Games 5 and 6 of the
season in late October.
The Islanders will be coming to Washington as a team in
crisis. They went into their Wednesday
night game against the Pittsburgh Penguins off a 2-1 overtime win over the
Calgary Flames on Monday night, but they had not won consecutive games since
their own fifth and sixth games of the season in late October. The Isles are 4-7-4 since those consecutive
wins. Their road record is dismal as
well, a record of 1-6-1, their lone win coming in a 2-1 Gimmick decision in
Anaheim against the Ducks on November 22nd.
The Islanders have what one might consider balanced scoring
– 20 different skaters have recorded goals for the club so far this
season. What they lack, though, is
anyone stepping up as a go-to goal scorer.
John Tavares leads the club with six goals, but that total is tied for 76th
in the league going into Wednesday night’s game against Pittsburgh. What Tavares has been, though, is consistent
as a point producer. After going without
a point in each of his first two games this season, he is 6-11-17 in his last
19 games and has not had consecutive games without a point. It just has not translated into big nights
for either himself or the club. Tavares
has points in 14 of the 21 games in which he played, but only two of them are
multi-point games, and the Islanders are just 6-4-4 in games Tavares recorded a
point. In 26 career games against
Washington, Tavares is 12-12-24, plus-3.
The disconnect between Tavares’ production and the team’s
success suggests that other Islanders just are not stepping up their
games. One player who might qualify as a
disappointment so far is Andrew Ladd. A
member of two Stanley Cup winning teams (Carolina in 2006 and Chicago in 2010),
Ladd has been one of the most reliable goal scorers in the league over the last
six seasons entering this one, averaging about a third of a goal per game each
year (a range of 0.29 – 0.38 goals per game and 26.9 goals per 82 games
overall). This year, however, Ladd has
just two goals in 21 games, none in his last seven contests, and is on a pace
to finish with eight goals, his lowest total since his first NHL season, when
he had six goals in 29 games with the 2005-2006 Carolina Hurricanes. Ladd is 14-19-33, plus-13, in 43 career games
against the Caps.
Another player in the “disappointing” category might be an
old friend of Caps fans. Jason Chimera
was signed away as a free agent by the Isles last summer, and he started the
season with his new team with his new head coach having the idea of using him on the top line. Chimera did have points in three of his first
five games, but that mini-run came to a screeching halt. In his last 15 games he is 1-2-3 (the goal
being his only one of the season so far).
None of this should surprise Caps fans, who watched Chimera display an
odd “saw-tooth” pattern to his scoring.
In his six full seasons in Washington, Chimera’s goal totals were
10-20-3 (in 47 games of the shortened 2012-2013 season) -15-7-20. With one goal so far, he seems on his way to
a seventh year as a prisoner of that pattern.
Chimera is 1-2-3, plus-2 in six career games against the Caps.
1. The Islanders have
but seven wins going into their Wednesday night contest against
Pittsburgh. Only one of them has come
against an Eastern Conference team, a 5-1 win over the Toronto Maple Leafs on
October 30th.
2. New York special
teams are struggling individually and together.
Both the power play (27th) and penalty kill (23rd)
rank in the bottom third in the league, one of five teams to rank in the bottom
third in both categories (Winnipeg, Colorado, Arizona, and Calgary are the
others). The Islanders have the
fourth-worst special teams index – the sum of power play and penalty killing
percentages (92.9) – in the league going into their Wednesday night game.
3. Through Tuesday
night’s games, there are149 players in the NHL with five or more goals scored
this season. The Islanders have two of
them, John Tavares (6) and Brock Nelson (5).
No team has fewer, and only Detroit has two of their own.
4. Speaking of
“bottom third,” the Islanders find themselves in that position in a lot of
categories… wins (7/30th), scoring offense (2.38/21st) scoring
defense (2.95/T-23rd), shots on goal per game (29.0/24th),
shots against per game (31.7/25th), faceoff winning percentage
(48.9/23rd), wins when trailing after one period (0/one of four such
teams), wins when scoring first (4/tied for 27th), one-goal wins
(4/tied for 22nd), overtime losses (4/only three teams have more)…the
Islanders do not come upon their record accidentally.
5. Possession seems
to be a four-letter word in Brooklyn. The Islanders are 29th in the
league in Corsi-for at 5-on-5 (46.07 percent; numbers from
Corsica.hockey). They are 28th
in this statistic on the road (44.61 percent).
1. Washington allowed
the first goal of a game only four times so far this season, fewest instances
in the league. By the same token, they
are tied for fewest wins when allowing that first goal – one, that one coming in
a 4-2 win over the Florida Panthers on November 5th when the Caps
allowed a Jared McCann goal to open the scoring. Washington scored three unanswered goals in
the third period for the win.
2. Nicklas Backstrom
is plus-3 for the season, which puts him at plus-99 for his career. Only Rod Langway had a better plus-minus as a
Capital (plus-117).
3. Alex Ovechkin and
Marcus Johansson are tied for second in the league in game-winning goals (4),
two behind Los Angeles’ Jeff Carter.
4. The Caps have only
one one-goal loss in regulation time this season. Only two teams have yet to suffer a one-goal
loss in regulation (Pittsburgh and Tampa Bay).
5. The Caps are a
very efficient team in one respect.
Well, two actually. At 5-on-5,
Washington has the third-best Corsi shooting percentage (goals as a share of
shot attempts) – 4.58 percent. They also
have the fourth best Corsi save percentage (saves as a share of shot attempts) –
96.80 percent (numbers from Corsica.hockey). Are those numbers sustainable? We’ll see.
The Peerless’ Players to Ponder
New York: The Goalies
If there is a situation that seems to capture the mess in
which this club finds itself at the moment, it is the goaltending
situation. When the season started,
there was the appearance of a hierarchy with Jaroslav Halak as the number one
goaltender (he started and finished four of the first five games of the season)
and Thomas Greiss as the backup. By the
end of October, though, the situation was in meltdown mode. It started when the Islanders claimed
Jean-Francois Berube on waivers in October 2015 from the Los Angeles Kings. The
move was seen as a bit of an insurance policy against the possibility of injury
to Halak, who did spend some time on injured reserve in the 2014-2015 season
and whose availability to start the 2015-2016 season was in some doubt. The injury fears played out as Halak missed
the last 17 games of the 2015-2016 season to a groin injury. What that led to was a three-headed goalie
monster to start the 2016-2017 season – Halak, Berube, and Thomas Greiss – the
second year the Islanders would go that route.
Those situations almost never work, and it did not in Brooklyn.
Halak wasn’t happy about the goalie rotation last season,
Berube wasn’t getting any work this season (he has yet to appear in a game),
and Greiss seemed to be the goalie in front of whom the skaters performed
best. It got worse. Allan Walsh (who also happens to be Berube’s
agent) took to social media to stir the pot, questioning the wisdom of carrying
three goalies, upon which it became known that the club
let the other teams in the league know that Halak was available in trade. Then, head coach Jack Capuano started Halak in
seven straight games. Halak was just
good enough to be not terrible. He went
1-2-4 in those seven games, two of the extra times decided in the freestyle
competition. His own numbers were not
sterling (3.01/.910), but not really indicative of a six-time loser in seven
games. Greiss got the call in the last
two games, allowing only four goals on 54 shots (.926) while splitting the
decisions (1-0-1).
Washington: Tom Wilson
Tom Wilson is tough (played in every game in three of four
seasons, including all 21 games this season), ornery (507 penalty minutes and
36 fighting majors in four seasons, both among the top five in the league over
that span), and plays with a physical edge (697 hits, tenth among forwards over
those four seasons). That’s not bad for
a young player who might be a fourth-round draft choice getting third line
minutes, but Wilson is a 16th overall pick who was drafted with the
idea of having “power forward,” with the scoring contributions that come with
that, as his description. His offensive
development seems frozen in amber. After
posting career highs in goals, assists, and points last season; he has one goal
– his only point – in 21 games this season.
That one goal is his only goal – his only point – in 35 regular season
games dating back to last season.
You could argue that Wilson is still only 22 years old,
certainly young enough to grow into a player who can contribute more in the
offensive end of the rink. And, his
propensity for fighting has dropped off somewhat (one fight in his last 18
games), suggesting a growing maturity from which those offensive contributions
might also grow. On the other hand,
Wilson does have more than 250 regular season games of experience on his resume
and just 15 goals (strangely enough, 16th in his draft class, the
same position at which he was picked).
Part of the problem, at least in recent games, is just not getting pucks
on net. He has five shots on goal in his
last eight games and was shut out in five of them. Wilson is 1-3-4, plus-3, in 13 career games
against the Islanders.
In the end…
On the one hand, the Caps will be playing their first game
in five days. On the other hand, the
Islanders are a team that is in a bad place, and we don’t just mean dead last
in the league standings. They aren’t
getting much in the way of scoring, their goaltending is a mess, they have key
pieces out of the lineup (Mikhail Grabovski and Dennis Seidenberg are on
injured reserve), and they can’t win on the road or against the East. If the Capitals do not take this club
lightly, they could put the game away early.
Then again, if they get off to a good start and think, “this is in the
bag,” or if they just think the Islanders are not in their class, it will make
for a lot of grumbling after the game in Capitals Nation. Never underestimate the pride of hockey
players.
Capitals 5 – Islanders 1
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