The Peerless’ Prognosticator is ON THE AIR!!!
Happy New Year, Caps fans, welcome to 2018, a year that is
still a blank slate, full of promise and hope.
The Caps begin the 2018 portion of their quest to win a championship
with a visit to an old adversary, the Carolina Hurricanes, a team with which
they will renew acquaintances three times in the space of ten days starting
with Tuesday night’s game in Raleigh.
Washington will be looking to snap a three-game losing
streak on the road (0-1-2) against a team that has not lost on home ice since
the day after Thanksgiving. Since that
5-4 loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs, the Hurricanes are 6-0-0 at PNC Arena, the
only team in the league to go undefeated on home ice in games since November 24th.
In that six-game home winning streak, 11 different skaters
have shared the 17 goals scored (2.83 per game team average). Sebastian Aho leads that group with four
goals, two of them game-winners. Aho is
building off a solid rookie season in 2016-2017 (24-25-49) in which he finished
third among all rookies in goals and fifth in points. With 11 goals in 38 games overall, he is on a
pace to match last year’s 24 goal total, while his 29 points puts him on a pace
to finish with 63 points. Aho brings a
four-game points streak overall into this game (4-2-6, plus-2). According to the Hurricanes media guide, his
nicknames are “Seabass” (Sebastian…”seabass”…okay) or “Fish” (Aho…ahi?). Okay...clever. He has been a thorn in the side of the Caps
in his brief career, going 2-4-6, plus-1, in four career games against
Washington.
Former Capital and second-tour Hurricane Justin Williams has
not been among the leaders in scoring in the Hurricanes’ home winning streak,
but he is among the overall team leaders in points this season
(24/fourth). Williams, who left the Caps
this past off-season to sign a two-year/$9 million contract with the
Hurricanes, is on a pace to finish with more points this season (52) than he
did with the Caps last season (48). What
seems unlikely is that he will continue the three years of improvement in goal
scoring (18-22-24) that he began with Los Angeles in 2014-2015 and carried over
into his two years in Washington. With seven goals in 38 games so far, he is on a pace to finish this season with 15 goals. On December
23rd, Williams became the 52nd player in team history to
dress for 300 games in a Carolina jersey and now stands 50th in
total games played for the franchise (303).
Williams comes into this game in a bit of a dry stretch, recording only
one assist in his last six games overall and without a goal in his last seven
contests. He is 14-20-34, plus-11, in 43
career games against the Capitals.
Cam Ward has almost every meaningful goaltending record in
the history of the franchise dating back to the Hartford Whaler days. He has appeared in more than twice as many
games (639, fifth among all active goaltenders) as second place Arturs Irbe
(309), won twice as many games (305, fifth among active goalies) as Irbe (130),
and has 25 shutouts (to 20 for Irbe). His goals against average (2.69) ranks third
among franchise goalies with at least 100 appearances, trailing Kevin Weekes
(2.41 in 119 games) and Irbe (2.49), while his save percentage (.909) trails
only Weekes (.912).
This season, if he has not quite enjoyed a renaissance, Ward
has returned to a more respectable level of performance than he had the last
five seasons in the pure act of stopping pucks.
His .917 save percentage is his best since he finished the 2010-2011
season with a .923 save percentage (perhaps not coincidentally, the last season
in which he received votes for the Vezina Trophy, finishing seventh). The odd part of his season is the
workload. He has 14 appearances so far
this season with a 10-2-1 record (one no-decision). Perhaps the result of the team signing Scott
Darling to a 4-year/$16.6 million contract (Darling is 8-11-0, 2.88, .896 in 25
games), but Ward is making a case for more work. In 39 career games against Washington, Ward
is 17-16-5, 2.68, .914, with four shutouts.
1. On Carolina’s 2017
report card it might say, “works and plays well with others.” They have the fewest penalty minutes per game
in the league (6:07),m fewest total penalties (108, 20 fewer than Columbus
through December 31st), and fewest major penalties (three, tied with
Vegas).
2. As a result of
their ability to avoid penalties, the Hurricanes are the only team in the NHL
to have faced fewer than 100 shorthanded situations (94). They have spent just 157:18 killing
penalties, the lowest amount of shorthanded ice time in the league. And watch out in the third period. Carolina’s special teams time difference of
plus-34:44 ( 62:15 in power play time, 27:31 in penalty killing time) is tops
in the league.
3. The Hurricanes do
not win blowouts. Their three wins by
three or more goals is fewer than any other team except Arizona (2) and Buffalo
(none).
4. Carolina has
out-shot opponents a whopping 29 times in 38 games so far this season. Only St. Louis has out-shot opponent more
often (41 times). Not that it matters to
the Hurricanes that much, since they won barely half of those 29 games
(15-9-5).
5. Boil this down to
one thing for the Caps…score first. No
team has fewer wins when allowing the first goal in games this season than
Carolina (three, tied with three other teams).
1. As the old year
ends, some odd facts… The Capitals had 26 different players record at least one
goal in calendar year 2017, from “Alzner” to “Winnik.” The NHL being a turnover sort of league, it’s
not all that surprising that neither player is still with the team.
2. Three Capitals
played in all 87 regular season games in 2017 – Alex Ovechkin, Evgeny
Kuznetsov, and Dmitry Orlov. It will not
escape the careful reader that all are Russian.
Not indicative of anything, just interesting.
3. Oh, and 87 regular
season games in 2017. Is there nothing
that will not remind this franchise of "that team?"
4. Consider…Braden
Holtby logged 3777:23 in ice time in 66 regular season games in calendar year
2017. The combined running time of “Game
of Thrones” is 3778 minutes in 67 episodes.
Hmm…
5. Ten rookies
dressed for the Capitals in 2017: Jakub Vrana (48 games/12-7-19, plus-6),
Chandler Stephenson (32/2-7-9, plus-6), Christian Djoos (31/3-5-8, plus-8),
Madison Bowey (32/0-8-8, minus-2), Zach Sanford (6/2-0-2, plus-1), Nathan
Walker (7/1-0-1, plus-1), Garrett Mitchell, one game, no points), Liam O’Brien
(four games, no points), Riley Barber (three games, no points), and Travis Boyd
(two games, no points).
The Peerless’ Players to Ponder
Carolina: Teuvo Teravainen
In the run-up to the 2012 entry draft, Teuvo Teravainen was thought to be among the most skilled skaters available. He was “a player with outstanding hockey
sense and great overall skill (NHL Director of European Scouting Goran
Stubb)”…”smooth, intelligent with great two-way efforts. He has a great one
timer but can also really find his teammates well from the perimeter and off
the rush. A very dynamic threat at all times (ISS Hockey’s Ross MacLean)”… and
“an impressive skater with a great first few steps who can get to a dangerous
top speed that puts defenders on their heels, while also showing the ability to
change gears quickly, and is very elusive from a standstill (Hockey
Prospectus).” So what happened?
Taken by the Chicago Blackhawks with the 18th
overall pick in the 2012 entry draft (note: the Caps passed up taking him with
the 16th pick in favor of Tom Wilson), he spent parts of three
seasons in Chicago before becoming more valuable as a trading asset than as a
young prospect. In June 2016, after
posting 17 goals and 44 points in 115 games with the Blackhawks, he was traded to Carolina with Bryan Bickell for a second
round pick in 2016 entry draft and a third
round pick in 2017 entry draft. He has
been more productive in Carolina, but not as much as his scouting reports might
have suggested he would be, recording 24 goals and 71 points in 119 games with the
‘Canes. Perhaps he is turning a corner,
though, as he is tied for the team lead in points (29, with Aho), and he is
1-3-4 in his last four games going into the new year. In six career games against the Caps,
Teravainen is 2-5-7, even.
Washington: Jakub Vrana
In the history of the Capitals franchise, seven players
finished their rookie campaigns with 20 or more goals. Jakub Vrana has a chance to become the eighth
and only the second since the 2004-2005 lockout. In 39 of the 40 games completed so far, Vrana
is half-way there with ten goals, the 36th rookie in club history to
record at least that many as a rookie.
Even if 20 goals ends up being beyond his reach, he seems certain to
finish with more goals as a rookie in the post 2004-2005 lockout era than all
but Alex Ovechkin (52 in 2005-2006), surpassing Nicklas Backstrom (14 in 2007-2008)
for the runner-up spot.
Vrana will need to pick up his pace, though. He is without a goal in his last seven games,
and his 10:38 in ice time in the Caps’ last game, a 5-2 win over the New Jersey
Devils ( a game in which he did not record a shot attempt), was his
third-lowest ice time of the season.
Perhaps he, like many young players, is hitting a bit of a wall as the
season reaches its half-way point. This
is one of those things that a player has to learn to manage, to find a way to
motivate himself to push through the long winter nights on the way to
spring. How successful he is at that
could be the difference between joining the “20-goal” rookies in club history
and falling short. Vrana does not have a
point in his only appearance to date against the Hurricanes.
In the end…
When the season started, one might have thought that the
Caps would be a team dancing on the edge of playoff eligibility this season and
that the Hurricanes would be perhaps a season away from being a serious
postseason contender. As it turns out,
both the Caps and the Hurricanes are teams that fall into the “better than
expected” category. Complicating things
is the nature of the division in which the two teams play, with still just 11
points separating the top team in the Metropolitan Division (Washington with 51
points) and last place (Philadelphia: 40 points). Carolina is that team dancing on the edge of
playoff eligibility, and even this far out from the end of the season it makes
for a dangerous team. What makes this
perhaps a more dangerous game for the Caps is the welcome dose of home cooking
the Hurricanes will have. Only Toronto
has played fewer games on home ice so far (16) than Carolina (17).
The Caps had better get used to seeing these guys, since
they will meet them three times – this game and a home-and-home/back-to-back
set of games in the second week of January.
Those will be the only Metropolitan Division games that the Caps play in
the first two weeks of the new year, so what better way to start the year than
putting the upstart Hurricanes in their place as the Caps complete the first
half of the regular season?
Capitals 4 – Hurricanes 3
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