The Peerless Prognosticator is ON THE AIR!!!
The 2016 trading deadline is in the rear-view mirror, but the season goes on, and Tuesday night it picks up again for the Washington Capitals as they return home from a loss in Chicago to the Blackhawks on Sunday afternoon to host the Pittsburgh Penguins on Tuesday night.
The 2016 trading deadline is in the rear-view mirror, but the season goes on, and Tuesday night it picks up again for the Washington Capitals as they return home from a loss in Chicago to the Blackhawks on Sunday afternoon to host the Pittsburgh Penguins on Tuesday night.
Washington comes into this contest having lost two of their
last three games, the first time this season that they lost two of three games
in regulation time. They will come into
this game trying to avoid consecutive losses in regulation for the first time
this season.
As for the Penguins, they come into this game having
alternated wins and losses over their last nine games (5-3-1). Over that span they outscored their opponents
by a 25-23 margin, three of their five wins coming by margins of three or more
goals.
Caps fans might ask, “who is Scott Wilson?” One answer might be “tied for the Penguins' team lead
in goals over the last nine games.” In
fact, Wilson has goals in four of his last five games to achieve that lead, his
only four goals this season. In fact, they
are his only four goals in 18 NHL games to date in his brief career. Wilson was a seventh-round draft pick of the
Penguins in 2011, and he while he had decent numbers at the University of
Massachusetts-Lowell (30 goals in 109 games), they were not of the sort that
suggested big NHL numbers down the road.
They he reached the AHL and found his goal-scoring touch. In 89 games with the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton
Penguins he had 41 goals. His
performance was rewarded to promotion to the big club – several of them. His most recent recall (February 1st)
was his sixth over the past two seasons.
He has never faced the Capitals.
Defenseman Kris Letang is the Penguin’s top point-producer
over the last nine games (1-7-8) and is the league’s sixth highest scoring
defenseman (10-36-46) despite playing in more than ten fewer games (50) than
any of the five defenseman ahead of him (or any of the nine behind him, for
that matter). Letang is already closing
in on scoring totals he reached last season.
He is within a goal (10) of last year’s total (11) and has 36 assists
(43 last season). He is on a pace to
finish with his first career 50-assist season.
Letang is also a minutes eater, tied for fourth in the league in total
games logging more than 25 minutes (40 so far).
Letang is 4-6-10, minus-14, in 24 career games against Washington.
Marc-Andre Fleury is the all-time franchise leader in many
categories for the Penguins. He has
appeared in 640 games (to 460 for Tom Barrasso), has 347 wins (Barrasso: 226), 203
regulation losses (Barrasso: 153), is tops in save percentage at .912
(Jean-Sebastien Aubin: .901; minimum: 100 appearances), leads in goals against
average at 2.57 (Johan Hedberg: 2.88), and has 42 shutouts (Barrasso: 22). This has been a rather typical season for
Fleury, whose 2.39 goals against average is within the tight range he has
posted over the previous five seasons (2.32 – 2.39), while his .920 save percentage
is equal to last year’s mark, the best he has had since a .921 save percentage
in 2007-2008. Fluery has slipped a bit
lately. After pitching a 25-save shutout
in a 2-0 win over the New Jersey Devils on January 26th, Fleury is 6-3-1,
2.80, .902 in his last ten appearances.
He is 18-11-2, 2.50, .929, with three shutouts in 32 career appearances
against the Caps.
Here is how the teams compare overall:
1. What the Penguins
do not have in their last nine games is a power play goal. They are 0-for-17, a run that is as amazing
for averaging fewer than two opportunities a game as it is for being shut
out. Five times in those nine games they
were held to a single power play chance.
2. Penguin penalty
killers have not been overly burdened, either.
Pittsburgh has faced just 20 shorthanded situations over their last nine
games, killing 17 of them (85.0 percent).
3. The Penguins do
not score first often, but they are successful when they do. They have taken the first lead of a game 25
times in 60 games this season and have a 21-3-1 record. Their .840 winning percentage in those games
is third-best in the league.
4. Only five teams
have fewer power play goals on the road than the Penguins (13).
5. Pittsburgh has the
eighth-best Corsi-for at 5-on-5 overall on the road this season (50.9
percent). They have a knack for applying
offensive pressure in those situations, holding the fourth-best Corsi-for/60
minutes (55.5; numbers from war-on-ice.com)
1. The Caps have gone
15 games without a multi-point win that did not involve an empty net goal (6-3
against Columbus on January 19th).
2. Washington is the
only teams in the league with three 55-point scorers. For the Caps it is Evgeny Kuznetsov (64),
Alex Ovechkin (58), and Nicklas Backstrom (57).
3. The Capitals’
107.7 special teams index (power play plus penalty killing percentages) is third
best in the league and best in the Eastern Conference. Anaheim (108.9) and St. Louis (107.8) rank
ahead of the Caps league-wide.
4. The Caps are still
undefeated when taking a lead into the first intermission of games
(18-0-0). The last team to go a full
season without losing a game in regulation when leading after the first period
was the 2012-2013 New York Rangers (13-0-1).
The last team with a perfect record when leading after one period was
the 1994-1995 St. Louis Blues, who went 15-0-0 in a lockout-shortened season.
5. The Caps are on a
14-game streak of scoring as many or more 5-on-5 goals than their opponents at
home. The last time the Caps allowed
more 5-on-5 goals than they scored on Verizon Center ice was December 18th,
when they allowed three goals and scored one in a 5-3 win over Tampa Bay
(numbers from war-on-ice.com).
The Peerless’ Players to Ponder
Pittsburgh: Mike Sullivan
Okay, so Sullivan is the head coach, but he has now been
behind the Penguins’ bench for 32 games, and comparing his record to date to
that of his predecessor, Mike Johnston, it is not all that different in terms
of wins and losses. Sullivan took over
after Johnston’s Penguins started the season with a 15-10-3 record. Sullivan’s Penguins are 16-11-5 since
then. Sullivan has opened things up
considerably, but it has merely shifted performance toward more total goals,
not a bigger goal differential for the Pens.
His club is averaging 2.84 goals per game compared to 2.36 under
Johnston, but they are also allowing 2.75 goals per game compared to 2.32 under
Johnston. The power play is better (21.1
percent to 15.6 percent), but the penalty killing is a bit worse (82.8 percent
to 84.2 percent). When Sullivan took
over, the Penguins were fifth in the Metropolitan Division and ninth in the
Eastern Conference, one point out of a wild-card playoff spot. As the Penguins head into Monday night’s game
against Arizona, they are in fourth place in the Metropolitan Division, three
points ahead of Philadelphia and New Jersey for the second wild card spot.
Washington: Nicklas Backstrom
There are 327 players in the league who have recorded 75 or
more shots on goal. Of that group,
Nicklas Backstrom ranks seventh in shooting percentage (17.3 percent). The thing is, though, Backstrom is averaging
his fewest shots per game (1.69) in his nine-year career. He has only seven shots on goal in his last
eight games, and he does not have a goal since he recorded one in a 5-2 loss to
the Florida Panthers on February 2nd. That is 13 straight games without a
goal. He remains one of the most consistent
point producers in the game, only twice in nine seasons averaging less than
0.95 points per game (he is at 0.98 this season). It is just that in the midst of a five game
stretch in which he does not have more than one shot attempt at 5-on-5 (and
only 21 in his last 14 games; numbers from war-on-ice.com), he does not seem to
be looking at the net much at the moment.
In the end…
For all the attention usually paid to the Penguins, they are
have yet to put much space between themselves and their playoff pursuers since
the coaching change in December or the recent resurgence of Sidney Crosby
(19-18-37, plus-10, in his last 29 games).
They are a season-high ten games over .500, but they do not have the
look of a sure playoff team. At the
other end of the rink, the Caps are in, what for them this season, a
slump. Having lost two of their last
three games and not winning by more than one-goal (except for games with an
empty net goal) in almost six weeks, the Caps do not look like the team that
was marauding across the NHL landscape through mid-January. It will be interesting to see which team can
take advantage of the recent misfortunes of the other.
Capitals 3 – Penguins 2