The Peerless Prognosticator is ON THE AIR!!!
The Washington Capitals take their show on the road on
Saturday night when they visit the Buffalo Sabres at First Niagara Center in
Buffalo in what will be the teams’ last meeting of the 2015-2016 season.
This will be the third meeting of the team in the last 23
days, so they should be familiar with one another. What with the Caps heading to the Snow Belt
of upstate New York, our attention turns to thoughts of warmer weather and the
fact that pitchers and catchers report to baseball spring training in about a
month. And with that we welcome one of
baseball’s most famous fans, who also happens to be quite a hockey fan it turns
out – Annie Savoy. Welcome, Annie.
Annie Savoy: I’m glad to be here.
Peerless: Annie, you obviously have a great love and respect
for baseball. How did you come to be a
hockey fan?
AS: “Walt Whitman once said, ‘I see great things in
baseball. It's our game, the American game. It will repair our losses and be a
blessing to us.’ You could look it up.
And then I read that Don Cherry said about hockey in Canada, ‘It's a
religion here, a way of life. We love the game too much. People were starving
for it. When the season starts, they will all be back. They can't help
themselves.’ I knew it was a sport for
me.”
Peerless: You are a believer in past lives. You once famously said that another lifetime
you were probably Catherine the Great, or Francis of Assisi. Do you think there might have been a hockey
player among your previous incarnations?
AS: Well, I don’t know about that, but if I was a hockey
player in a past life, I think it might have been ‘Boom-Boom Geoffrion’…or
maybe Georges Vezina. I just like saying
“Chicoutimi Cucumber.’”
Peerless: I don’t know if you’ve seen the Caps very often,
but I’d like to get your take on them so far.
AS: “Well, from what I’ve seen, it’s a really special team,
20 guys really playing together every night, the kind of thing that happens,
but we just don’t understand. It’s like
I always say, ‘it's all a question of quantum physics, molecular attraction,
and timing. Why, there are laws we don't understand that bring us together and
tear us apart. Uh, it's like pheromones. You get three ants together, they
can't do dick. You get 300 million of them, they can build a cathedral.’ Or maybe 20 of them can win a Stanley Cup.”
Peerless: One last question…It looks as though Michael Latta
has recovered from the arm injury he suffered a few games ago. If he’s ready to go, do you think he deserves
a white jersey from Barry Trotz for this game?
AS: “Honey, we all deserve to wear white.”
Well, the Caps will dress 20 in white for this game, and
Buffalo will send out 20 in blue. And
blue might be the mood in which Sabres fans might find themselves these
days. Starting with the home and home
losses to the Caps in the last week of December, Buffalo is 2-6-0 over their
last eight games. They have won their
last two contests, but it is a team that is sliding in the standings, perhaps
starting to look a bit toward next season and the promise a young team with
talent can hope to fulfill.
In those last eight games, Buffalo has been outscored by a
25-15 margin. Their power play is
5-for-27 over that span (18.5 percent), and their penalty kill is 9-for-13
(70.7 percent). Four times in those
eight games the Sabres faced a single shorthanded situation. They were a perfect 4-for-4 in those games,
so the key here, apparently, is getting them to go shorthanded more than once.
Sam Reinhart has four of the Sabres’ 15 goals over the last
eight games, three of them coming in Buffalo’s 4-2 win over the Winnipeg Jets
on January 10th. The hat trick was his
first in the NHL. Reinhart, a second
overall draft pick in 2014, has had a decent rookie campaign with the
Sabres. He is tied for fifth in goal
scoring among rookies, and he is tied for sixth overall with 19 points. In a season – and a city – in which he is
overshadowed by Jack Eichel as a rookie talent, he is having a nice year. He does not have a point in two career games
against Washington.
Speaking of Jack Eichel, he is the leading point-getter in
this recent Sabre Slump (2-5-7). He has
been just about what you might expect from a second-overall draft pick (2015
draft) in the offensive end. He is tied
for third among rookies in goals scored (13, with Max Domi), fourth in assists
(14), and fourth in total points (27).
He is also tied for first with Chicago’s Artemi Panarin in average ice
time among rookie forwards (18:51 per game).
However, he is also third-worst among 144 rookie skaters in plus-minus
(minus-11), so there’s that. He has two
assists in the two games he played against the Caps this season and is a
minus-2.
The goaltending situation for the Sabres in this game might
see the return of Robin Lehner to the ice, depending on who head coach Dan
Bylsma picks to start against the Boston Bruins on Friday night. Lehner, obtained from the Ottawa Senators for
a first-round draft pick last summer, was the starter-to-be for the Sabres, but
he sprained an ankle in the Sabres’ season opener, and he is just now reporting
back for duty after a conditioning stint with the Sabres’ AHL affiliate in
Rochester. Lehner does lead the league
in one statistic. He is the NHL’s
heaviest goalie to dress for a game this season at 240 pounds. He has one career appearance against the Caps,
allowing two goals on 29 shots in a 2-1 loss to Washington on February 5,
2015. The odd part of that game was that
all three goals were scored in a span of 2:02 in the second period.
Here is how the teams compare overall:
1. The goaltending
has not been bad in Lehner’s place. Chad
Johnson and Linus Ullmark have combined for a 2.51 goals against average and a
.916 save percentage with one shutout (Johnson).
2. Buffalo is one of
those odd teams whose home record has put them in an uncompetitive position in
the East. They are just 8-13-2 at First
Niagara Center while going 9-9-2 on the road (pending results on Friday night).
3. The Sabres have a
decent home penalty kill (82.6 percent/14th), but they do not appear to pose
much of a threat to score when shorthanded.
They have just one shorthanded goal this season, that by Evander Kane in
a 5-2 win over the Arizona Coyotes on December 4th. Only two NHL teams have yet to score a
shorthanded goal, the Detroit Red Wings and the Coyotes.
4. Buffalo spends a
lot of time trying to get their wits about them in the offensive end early in
games. Their 20 first period goals are
second fewest in the league to the 18 that the Philadelphia Flyers have scored.
5. Buffalo does not
have an easy time of it at home when it comes to possession numbers. In overall/score-adjusted/close score Corsi
they rank 19th (49.3 percent)/27th (46.2 percent)/26th
(47.7 percent; numbers from war-on-ice.com).
1. In the Caps’ most
recent five-game winning streak coming into this contest, they have outscored
opponents, 22-8, their last four games with four or more goals scored. Their power play is 4-for-13 (30.8 percent),
while their penalty killers are 14-for-15 (93.3 percent).
2. The usual suspects
lead the Caps in goals and assists in their five-game winning streak. Alex Ovechkin has five goals, while Nicklas
Backstrom has five assists. Backstrom
leads in total scoring with seven points (2-5-7).
3. Among players
appearing in 20 or more games this season, Backstrom is one of seven averaging
at least 1.00 points per game (41 points in 40 games). He ranks fourth overall in that statistic,
trailing only Tyler Seguin (1.16), Jamie Benn (1.20), and Patrick Kane (1.37).
4. The Caps are the
only team in the league that ranks in the top five in goals scored by period –
1st period: 39 (3rd); 2nd period: 46 (2nd); and 3rd period: 53 (2nd).
5. Over their last 17
road games, a span of which the Caps have not been over 50 percent Corsi-for in
as many as two consecutive games, the Caps are 46.0 percent overall. They are better in score-adjusted terms over
that span (49.5 percent), but worse in close score situations (45.7 percent; numbers from war-on-ice.com).
The Peerless’ Players to Ponder
Buffalo: Matt Moulson
Once upon a time, when he was with the New York Islanders,
Matt Moulson was one of those quietly effective, under-the-radar goal
scorers. From 2009 until 2013, when he
was traded to Buffalo (his first your of duty there) with two draft picks for
Thomas Vanek, he recorded 118 goals in 304 games, a rate of 32 goals per 82
games. Since leaving Long Island,
Moulson has 34 goals in 183 games with the Sabres and the Minnesota Wild, a
rate of 15 goals per 82 games. That
includes just four goals in 42 games this season for the Sabres, none in his
last 30 games. The lack of performance
has eaten heavily into his ice time; he was under ten minutes in each of his
last three games and in four of his last seven (the only four games he was given
less than ten minutes of ice time this season).
Moulson is 5-7-12, plus-2, in 22 career games against the Capitals.
Washington: Taylor Chorney
Taylor Chorney is not going to wow anyone with his offense
from the blue line. When he recorded an assist
in the Caps’ 3-2 loss to the Dallas Stars on November 19th, it was the first
point he had in an NHL game since he had a goal (the game-winner) and an assist
in a 4-1 win over those same Stars on February 15, 2011, when he was skating
for the Edmonton Oilers. In between, he
went 25 games over all or part of five seasons with four teams (Edmonton, the
St. Louis Blues, the Pittsburgh Penguins, and the Caps) without recording a
point. This season, however, he has been
pressed in to more regular duty with Washington as a result of injuries to
defensemen Brooks Orpik and John Carlson.
In 34 games (more than he had in the previous four seasons combined (24)
and more than in any season since he appeared in 42 games for the Oilers in
2009-2010) he has four assists and is a plus-13, tied with Nate Schmidt and one
behind Matt Niskanen and Karl Alzner for the team lead among defensemen. In three career games against the Sabres,
Chorney has not recorded a point, and he is a plus-1.
In the end…
This is one of those “trap games,” the kind in which it
might be tempting for the Caps to peek ahead to their contest with the Rangers
on Sunday evening. Given that the Caps
are going to be playing back-to-back contests, it might be that Philipp
Grubauer gets a start in goal with Braden Holtby held out to face the Rangers
in the Sunday matchup. Any way you slice it, this is one of those games that
tests the “stick to business” theme for the Caps. It is something they have done well over the
first half of the season, and they certainly did not take the Sabres lightly in
their home-and-home set last month, shutting them out in Buffalo (2-0) and
beating them handily in Washington (5-2).
The Sabres might make it interesting, but not interesting enough to make
it a bad night for the Caps.
Capitals 5 – Sabres 3
