The Peerless Prognosticator is ON THE AIR!!!
Fresh off an impressive 4-1 win over the San Jose Sharks,
the Washington Capitals return to Capital One Arena ice on Wednesday night
against another Western Conference opponent.
The Chicago Blackhawks come to Washington in what has become a most
surprising rivalry. The Caps have a
six-game winning streak against the Blackhawks on home ice dating back to
November 2008. The last Chicago win on this
ice sheet was a 4-3 overtime win on January 10, 2006.
The Caps are on a roll at home with a record of 9-2-0 in
their last 11 games on home ice.
Meanwhile, the Blackhawks are struggling of late, losers of four in a
row (0-2-2) and with a 6-5-3 record on the road this season.
The four game-losing streak the Blackhawks bring to Capital
One Arena look like a run of bad luck as much as anything else. Three of the losses were by one goal, one in
overtime and one in a Gimmick. The other
loss was a two-goal loss to Los Angeles in which the Kings scored an empty net
goal late for the final margin.
The odd thing about the four-game losing streak for Chicago
is that while they have spread their goal-scoring around – eight different
players have goals – none have more than one in that stretch. One of those players is a forward who seems
to have been playing in the NHL forever but is not yet 30 years old. Artem Anisimov is with his third NHL team in
the Blackhawks (Columbus and the New York Rangers being the other), skating for
his third season in Chicago. His goals
per game, assists per game, and points per game have improved with each stop
along the way, averaging 0.19-.025-0.44 per game in 244 games with the Rangers,
0.24-0.26-0.50 in 168 games in Columbus, and at the moment 0.32-0.29-0.61 in
168 career games with Chicago. His 12
goals in 27 games this season puts him on a pace (36 goals) that would
obliterate his previous career high (22 goals set with Columbus in 2013-2014
and tied with Chicago last season). It is
more than a bit surprising that over the past two seasons, Anisimov’s 34 goals
is second-most on the club, topped only by Patrick Kane’s 44 goals (he leads the club this season). And if you are thinking that ranking is more
a product of Artemi Panarin moving on to Columbus, Anisimov’s 34 goals come in
91 games, while Panarin’s 31 (third-ranked over the past two seasons) came in
82 games. He is 3-6-9, minus-2, in 20 career games against the Caps.
Cody Franson is the only Blackhawk defenseman with a goal in
this four-game losing streak for Chicago.
Franson is another well-traveled player, this first season with Chicago
being his fourth stop in his nine-year NHL career (Nashville, Toronto, and
Buffalo being the others). That goal he
has in this streak is the only one Franson has this season, not an especially
surprising state given that his career high in goals is eight, recorded with
Nashville in his sophomore 2010-2011 season.
It has been an odd season for Franson, extending back to the
off-season. An unrestricted free agent,
he was signed to a professional try-out contract by Chicago in early
September. He showed enough for the
Blackhawks to extend to him a one-year contract with a $1 million price tag. He sat for the first three games this season,
the odd righthanded defenseman out.
He appeared in just two of the Blackhawks’ first 11 games, but since getting a
sweater against the Colorado Avalanche in the last game of October, he sat out
just one game (against New Jersey on November 12th). Franson is 4-5-9, plus-1, in 20 career games against Washington.
In the storied history of the Chicago Blackhawks dating back
to 1926, Corey Crawford is third on the all-time franchise list of goaltenders –
80 in all – in wins (225). He is 12th on the wins list among active goaltenders.
However, Crawford is on the injured reserve list at the moment with a lower
body injury, which could leave the netminding duties in the hands of backup goalie
Anton Forsberg. It is an unfamiliar
situation for Forsberg, who has just 18 games of experience on his NHL resume
over four seasons, the first three of which he spent in Columbus after being
taken in the seventh round (188th overall) by the Blue Jackets in
the 2011 entry draft. He has already
posted a career high of eight appearances this season with Chicago, but his career
numbers (2-11-3, 3.57, .896) and 2017-2018 numbers to date (1-3-3, 3.04, .914)
remain modest. Forsberg has one career
appearance against the Caps and an historic one at that. On January 2, 2016 he relieved the injured Curtis
McElhinney in overtime of a 4-4 game. He
stopped all six shots he faced in the last 4:05 of the extra frame and stopped
two of three trick shots to earn the win, the first goalie in NHL history to
earn his first career win without playing in regulation time.
If not Forsberg, it could be Jean-Francois Berube, recently
of the Rockford IceHogs in the AHL. His
route to the Blackhawks was even more circuitous than Forsberg’s, having been
drafted in the fourth round (95th overall) in the 2009 entry draft
by the Los Angeles Kings, but never playing for them, waived by the team in
October 2015 after the Kings signed Jhonas Enroth to be their backup. He was claimed by the New York Islanders, for
whom he appeared in 21 games over the last two seasons, going 6-4-3, 3.11, .900. After last season, his career path took an
odd turn. He was an impending Group VI
free agent based on a limited number of games played and was selected by the
Vegas Golden Knights in the expansion draft last June, a selection based on a trade between those two teams that involved promises, an injured center, and draft picks.
Less than two weeks later he signed as a free-agent by the Blackhawks. Since then he has toiled in the AHL waiting
his first appearance with Chicago.
Perhaps this will be the night.
It would be his first career appearance against the Caps.
1. Chicago brings a
bit of a leaky defense to town. Through
Monday’s games, only two teams – Anaheim (36.3) and Florida (35.6) – have allowed
more shots on goal per game than the Blackhawks (33.7). However, they do have decent shot attempt numbers
at fives, ranking ninth in shot attempts-for percentage (51.38 percent).
2. The Blackhawks
bring the league’s third-best road penalty kill into this game (87.9 percent), pending
Tuesday’s results, trailing only Toronto (89.4 percent) and Los Angeles (91.5
percent). Much of that is an early
season phenomenon, though. Chicago was
20-for-21 over their first four games on the road (95.2 percent). Since then, they are 31-for-37 (83.8
percent).
3. Chicago has a very
odd penalty profile on the road. Their
128 penalty minutes in road games is just 18th-most in the
league. Their 63 penalties ranks
eighth. However, 62 of those 63
penalties are minor penalties – third-most in the league. Chicago and Carolina are the only two teams in
the league without a major penalty on the road.
4. Maybe it’s the arena
lighting that is more to their liking at home, but the Blackhawks have the
sixth-worst shooting percentage on the road (7.9 percent).
5. Chicago has 12
wins but game-winning goals from only three players, and two of them account
for 11 of the total – Brandon Saad (six) and Artem Anisimov (five). Lance Bouma has the other one.
1. The last Chicago
win against the Caps in regulation in Washington was a 4-3 win on March 12,
2004. For those of you who don’t
remember those heady days of Caps' struggles, here was the lineup that day…
- Bates Battaglia
- Rick Berry
- Josef Boumedienne
- Owen Fussey
- Jean-Luc Grand-Pierre
- Jeff Halpern
- Craig Johnson
- Joel Kwiatkowski
- Brooks Laich
- Kip Miller
- Brad Norton
- Stephen Peat
- Matt Pettinger
- Todd Rohloff
- Alexander Semin
- Brian Willsie
- Brendan Witt
- Dainius Zubrus
- Olaf Kolzig
This team Caps team is probably better, but then again, so
is Chicago’s.
2. Only three teams
have more power play chances on home ice than the Caps (56) this season –
Ottawa (57), Chicago (59), and the New York Rangers (67).
3. On the other hand,
only five teams have been shorthanded more than the Caps (47) on home ice. Not good, given that the Caps rank 23rd
in the league in home penalty killing (76.6 percent).
4. The Caps are in
the top ten in credited hits at home (318/9th) and blocked shots (225/7th). That might be a credit to grittership, but it
also might be a reflection of ranking 24th in shot attempts-for
percentage at home (48.12; numbers from NHL.com).
5. Washington has the
third-best faceoff winning percentage on home ice (55.5 percent), trailing only
Nashville (56.0 percent) and Philadelphia (56.4 percent).
The Peerless’ Players to Ponder
Chicago: Alex DeBrincat
If good things come in small packages, Alex DeBrincat is a
fine package. Of 762 skaters to dress in
the NHL this season, DeBrincat is the second shortest at 5’7” (Colorado’s Rocco
Grimaldi is one inch shorter), and at 165 pounds, only seven players weighing
less have appeared in an NHL game.
Nevertheless, DeBrincat’s 11 goals trails only Vancouver’s Brock Boeser
among rookies, and his 19 points rank fourth in this year’s rookie class. He has been very efficient in doing so, since
he ranks just 30th in average ice time (14:25) among rookies
appearing in at least ten games. He is
one of three rookies this season to record a hat trick (Boeser and Adrian Kempe
being the others), that coming in a 7-3 Chicago win over the Anaheim Ducks on
November 27th. The four
points he recorded in that game is just one of four such games by rookies this
season (Boeser and Kempe with four point games, Mathew Barzal with a
five-assist game against the Colorado Avalanche on November 5th). This will be his first career appearance
against the Capitals.
Washington: Christian Djoos
Christian Djoos is one of the few players in the league as
slightly built as Chicago’s DeBrincat, and although his rookie footprint is not
as deep as his counterpart, it has been a decent opening in his NHL
career. He is one of just seven of 39
rookie defensemen to record two or more goals (he has two), and his plus-4 is
tied for seventh in his rookie defenseman class. What is more, he has improved in that last
statistic, having recorded just one “minus” game in his last 14 contests (minus-1
in the 4-3 win over Columbus last Saturday).
He has had relatively sheltered minutes, particularly at home where he
has topped 15 minutes played just once in ten games at Capital One Arena. This will be his first career appearance
against Chicago.
In the end…
Out of adversity comes opportunity. With Andre Burakovsky still sidelined and
T.J. Oshie joining him after sustaining an injury Monday night, the Caps will
be just that much thinner among the forwards.
This is where we say it would be a good time for Nicklas Backstrom to
break out of his goal-scoring slump (21 games and counting), and that would be
true. But it is also a chance for
others. For instance, Jay Beagle has not
scored on a goaltender since Game 8, a shorthanded goal against the Detroit Red
Wings in a 4-3 win (his two goals since were of the empty net variety). Tom Wilson doesn’t have a goal in his last 14
games. Madison Bowey is looking for his
first NHL goal, while fellow defenseman Matt Niskanen is looking for his first
one this season. There is room for folks
to step up and fill in with a couple of key contributors out of the
lineup. They will have to against a struggling,
if prideful bunch such as the Blackhawks.
Capitals 4 – Blackhawks 3