The Peerless Prognosticator is ON THE AIR!!!
After splitting their first two games of the season against
Metropolitan Division foes, the Washington Capitals host their first
non-division opponent of the season when the Colorado Avalanche visit Verizon
Center on Tuesday. The Avs will come to
town having played the night before in Pittsburgh against the Penguins after
taking a wild 6-5 win over the Dallas Stars in Colorado’s home opener on
Saturday night.
The Caps, with their 1-0-1 record, have just four goals
scored in two games to date, two players – Andre Burakovsky in the opener in
Pittsburgh and Daniel Winnik in the home opener against the New York Islanders –
each with two-goal games.
In their season opener, the Avalanche were led by center Joe
Colborne, who recorded his first career hat trick, two of his goals coming on
power plays seven minutes apart in the first period, and the other giving the
Avs a three goal lead in the second period before they hung on for dear life at
the end against the Stars. Colborne is a
former 16th overall draft pick of the Boston Bruins (2008
draft). At the time, then Bruin General
Manager Peter Chiarelli said of him, "This kid can really fire the puck…He's
a good skater…very smart, with offensive acumen. He's a big, strong focused kid." Less than three years later, though, he was
traded to the Toronto Maple Leafs with a 2011 first and a 2012 second round
draft pick for defenseman Tomas Kaberle, never having played a game for the
Bruins. He barely made a ripple with the
Maple Leafs, appearing in just 16 games over three seasons with one goal and
five assists. He was traded to the
Calgary Flames just before the start of the 2013-2014 season to his hometown
Calgary Flames for a fourth round draft pick.
He made more of an impression in Calgary, posting 37 goals and 100
points in 217 games over three seasons.
However, after the 2015-2016 season, he was not tendered a qualifying
offer by the Flames and signed with the Avalanche on the first day of the
unrestricted free agent signing period last July. Colborne is 0-2-2, even, in five career games
against the Caps.
There is a Capitals connection to Colborne, going back to
the trade between the Bruins and the Maple Leafs in 2011. The second round pick traded with Colborne to
the Maple Leafs ended up taking a trip of its own. Let’s follow along. This pick was a conditional pick to start
with, the condition being that the Bruins reach the Stanley Cup finals in 2011.
They did, and the condition was exercised.
Toronto took the pick and traded it to Colorado for John-Michael Liles
in June 2011. A year later, Colorado
sent this pick and their first round pick to the Caps for goalie Semyon
Varlamov. A week later, the Caps sent
this pick and Cody Eakin to the Dallas Stars for center Mike Ribeiro. What became of the pick? The Stars took Mike Winther, who played for
four different teams in Canadian juniors and last year played for the
University of Calgary. Such is the life
of an NHL draft pick.
Back to the game at hand.
The Avs had two other players in their opener against the Stars score
goals on their only shots of the game.
Nathan MacKinnon was one of those players. MacKinnon, now in his fourth NHL season, has
not quite yet fulfilled the potential that a number one overall draft pick
(2013 draft) might have been expected to have.
He’s been good – 60 goals and 155 points in 219 career games – but he
has been outnumbered, so to speak, but the sixth-overall pick, Sean Monahan,
who is 81-79-160 in 240 games for the Calgary Flames. However, he and Monahan are the only players
over the last four seasons (including this one to date) with at least 50 goals
and 150 points at the age of 21 or younger.
MacKinnon certainly has room to grow.
He has not lacked for production against the Caps in his young career,
though. MacKinnon is 2-3-5, plus-1, in
five career games against Washington.
Defenseman Tyson Barrie was the other Avalanche to record a
goal on his only shot in the win over Dallas.
The harmless looking shot flipped at the Dallas net from the right point
clicked off the left toe of defenseman Stephen Johns’ skate and behind goalie
Kari Lehtonen for what would be the game-winning goal. Game winning goals are no stranger to Barrie,
who has 12 game winners among his 41 career NHL goals. Barrie is one of those offensive defensemen
who slip through the cracks in the discussion of the upper echelon of that
specie of blueliner. Over the last five
seasons, including this one, Barrie is one of ten defensemen with at least 40
goals and at least 100 assists. The list
looks like an all-star roster. Perhaps more impressive, Barrie is the youngest defenseman on that list, nine
days younger than Oliver Ekman-Larsson.
He is 1-1-2, minus-4, in four career games against Washington.
1. Joe Colborne is
the tenth Colorado player to record a hat trick in the post-2004-2005 lockout
era. By contract, seven Capitals have
done it. The difference is that the Caps
have 17 hat tricks among those seven players (Alex Ovechkin leads with seven),
while Colorado has 15 hat trick among their ten players (Milan Hejduk leads
with three).
2. Colorado is going
to be looking to break a streak this season.
They won 39 games in each of the past two seasons, failing to reach the
postseason in each instance, after winning 52 games in 2013-2014.
3. Jared Bednar won
his first game as head coach in the NHL last Saturday. He is the seventh head coach in Avalanche
history and has a connection to the Caps.
He was head coach for the affiliate South Carolina Stingrays for two
seasons, going to the postseason both times and winning the Kelly Cup as ECHL
champion in 2009.
4. Colorado had
trouble keeping other teams off their goaltenders last season. Only the Ottawa Senators (32.8) and Vancouver
Canucks (32.5) allowed more shots on goal per game than the Avalanche (32.3).
5. The Avalanche was
the worst possession team last year at 5-on-5, and it really was not all that
close. Their 44.20 percent Corsi-for at 5-on-5
was almost two full percentage points worse than the New Jersey Devils
(46.17). They had the third-fewest shot
attempts per 60 minutes at 5-on-5 (50.14) and the most shot attempts against
(63.30; numbers from Corsica.hockey).
1. On Saturday night,
Daniel Winnik became the 17th Capital since the 2004-2005 lockout to
record at least two two-goal games on home ice at Verizon Center (his other
two-goal game was in a 4-1 win over the Nashville Predators last March 18th). He has a way to go to catch Alex Ovechkin for
the top spot. Ovechkin has 48 such
games.
2. Keep telling
yourself it’s early, but the Caps have the worst special teams index (power
play plus penalty killing percentages) in the league: 50.0.
3. John Carlson is
second in the league among defensemen in shots on goal with 11 in two games. Calgary’s Dougie Hamilton has 13 in three
games.
4. So far this
season, 28 defensemen have recorded goals.
None of them play for the Capitals.
There are 55 players identified as centers who have scored goals. None of them play for the Caps. In fact, only the New Jersey Devils and Los
Angeles Kings have scored fewer goal (three apiece) than the Caps (four). It’s early.
5. The Caps are fifth
in Corsi-for at 5-on-5 (54.29 percent; numbers from Corisca.hockey). Of the top five teams, only the New York
Rangers have suffered a loss in regulation time. As a group, the Cap, Rangers, Tampa Bay,
Vancouver, and Florida are 8-1-1.
The Peerless’ Players to Ponder
Colorado: Semyon Varlamov
Five goals on 28 shots was Semyon Varlamov’s line in the
Avalanche’s opener against Dallas on Saturday.
But hey, a win is a win, right?
It is not as if it was a performance against the grain, either. Starting his sixth season with the Avalanche,
Varlamov is 2-4-0, 3.92, .893 in his first game of the season. Ah, but in his second game of the season to
date, he is 4-1-0, 1.41, .954, with one shutout. It does not seem quite as if Varlamov played
his last game for the Caps back in 2011, but he has appeared in 266 games for
Colorado and has 134 wins for the Avs, both second-best in franchise history
(Patrick Roy had 262 wins in 478 games).
Over his career with the Avalanche, which started with the 2011-2012
season, only Ryan Miller (107) and Mike Smith (106) have more losses than
Varlamov (104). The odd part of that
trio is that they have similar numbers of games played (Varlamov: 266, Smith:
258, Miller: 257), goals against average (Varlamov: 2.65, Smith: 2.64, Miller:
2.63), and save percentages (Varlamov: .917, Smith: .916, Miller: .916). He has a career record of 2-2-0, 1.78, .956
against the Caps.
Washington: Alex Ovechkin
Alex Ovechkin opened the 2016-2017 season by going without a
goal in his first two games. This is
cause for, if not panic, then concern among some regions of Capitals
Nation. Here is a fun fact. The last time he opened a season without a
goal in his first two games was in the abbreviated 2012-2013 season. In fact, he didn’t record his first goal
until Game 5 that season. He ended up
scoring 32 goals in his last 44 games.
That is a 60-goal pace over an entire 82-game season. But, when a goal scorer is on the far side of
30, there will be attention paid to whether a slip in production is the start
of the inevitable. Of some concern is
that he has only three shots at 5-on-5 in almost 27 minutes of ice time against
Pittsburgh and the New York Islanders, teams against which he came into the
season with a combined 59 (in 87 games) of his 525 career goals. Colorado is learning a new system off a year
in which they were not defensively solid.
It is a team against which Ovechkin could jump-start his 2016-2017
season. He is 5-4-9, minus-1, in 12
career games against the Avalanche.
In the end…
Colorado is a team made to order for a team looking to break
out of an offensive slump. They are not
a great defensive team to start with, and they will be coming to Washington the
day after having to endure the Penguins’s team speed and firepower in
Pittsburgh. But Colorado is a speedy
team in their own right, and if the Caps let them hang around and get a goal
early, it could be the start of a rough night that will leave fans in an ornery
mood. So which will it be…Avs served up
on a cracker, or the Avs skating rings around the Capitals’ defense? You’ve read this space often enough to know
the answer. Dinner is served…
Capitals 4 – Avalanche 2