The Peerless Prognosticator is ON THE AIR!!!
It is a mid-week matchup on national television on Wednesday
night, pitting the Washington Capitals against the Boston Bruins at Capital One
Arena. These two teams sit atop the
league standings, the Caps with 22 wins and 49 points, while the Bruins have 20
wins and 46 points. The odd part of this
matchup, though, is that both teams are coming off losses, the Caps dropping a
5-2 decision to the Columbus Blue Jackets on Monday in their first game at home
after sweeping a four-game road trip, and the Bruins are losers of two
straight, a 4-1 loss to the Colorado Avalanche on Saturday and a 5-2 loss in
Ottawa to the Senators on Monday.
Then and Now…
This will be the 162nd meeting of these teams in
the all-time series. Washington has a 63-69-8
(21 ties) record against the B’s, 33-31-4 (12 ties) on home ice. Since 2005-2006, the Caps are 31-12-7 against
the Bruins overall, 16-5-4 on home ice.
Active Leaders vs. Opponent…
Noteworthy Opponents…
David Pastrnak has received the attention this season with
his hot goal scoring start, but it is Brad Marchand with whom he is tied for
the team goal scoring lead on the road at nine goals apiece. Marchand is also the team’s points leader on
the road to date with 22, tied with Connor McDavid for fourth place in the
league in road scoring. Marchand, for
all his annoying qualities, has become one of the most prolific scorers in the
game. Since 2016-2017, he is one of only
three players to record at least 125 goals and at least 300 points
(127/316). Mc David (131/376) and Nikita
Kucherov (130/344) are the others. When
one adds suspensions and fines, Marchand stands alone as a combination of
high-end production and high-end aggravation.
How aggravating? Six suspensions
in his career totaling 19 games, eight fines totaling more than $670,000, and
two licking incidents.
Marchand has yet to run afoul of the league so far this
season, but with him it always just seems a matter of time. What he has done this season is produce
points in bunches. He has 14 multi-point
games, tied for second in the league behind Leon Draisaitl (16). And, perhaps not surprisingly, they are
important to Bruin success. The Bruins
are 12-1-1 in those 14 multi-point games, their first regulation loss coming in
Boston’s 5-2 loss to Ottawa on Monday night.
Putting up points in bunches has not diminished Marchand’s
consistency. Only three times in 31
games this season has he had consecutive games without a point. However, even
with the two assists he posted against Ottawa on Monday, he has only three
points in his last six games, all of them assists. Marchand is 7-9-16, minus-13, in 30 career
games against Washington.
Sometime this season, defenseman Zdeno Chara is likely to
dress for his 1,000th game as a Bruin, becoming only the second
defenseman in team history to do so, joining Ray Bourque (1,518). No active defenseman in the NHL is within
7,000 minutes of ice time recorded of Chara (36,444 to 29,373 for Jay
Bouwmeester). However, he is also the
oldest skater in the league at age 42, and a concession to his age is ice time. At the moment it is Charlie McAvoy who has the
highest average ice time among Boston defensemen so far this season (22:35 to
Chara’s 21:21). What McAvoy has not done
with all that ice time, though, is score a goal. He is the only one of six Bruins defensemen
to dress for more than five games yet to record one this season, all nine of
his points (second to Tory Krug among defensemen) coming on assists. McAvoy is no stranger to high ice time loads.
He averaged more than 22 minutes per game in each of his first two
seasons. On the other hand, he has an
injury history, missing 19 games of the 2017-2018 season to heart arrhythmia
and an MCL sprain and 27 games of the 2018-2019 season to a lower body injury
and a concussion.
The odd part about McAvoy’s ice time is that more is not
necessarily a good thing. Boston is
7-2-6 in the 15 games in which he skated more than 22:30, 13-3-0 in the 16
games in which he skated 22:30 or less. He has some other odd statistical
quirks about his record this season, too.
For instance, the Bruins have not lost a game in regulation in which he
did not receive credit for a hit (6-0-2).
Blocked shots, though, are a good thing.
Boston is 11-1-3 in the 15 games in which he recorded two or more, 9-4-3
in the 16 games in which he had one or none.
Another… he has three shots on goal in only three games this season, but
the Bruins lost all of them (0-1-2).
McAvoy is 0-3-3, even, in six career games against the Caps.
Can Tuukka Rask make it tuukka…uh, two in a row? Rask won his last appearance against the
Caps, pitching a 24-save shutout last February 3rd in a 1-0 Boston
win. It was only the second win Rask has
against the Caps in his career, the odd thing about the wins being that both
came via shutout. The other came in a
3-0 win over the Caps in March 2014. The
Caps have been Rask’s personal nightmare for almost all of his 13 seasons. Consider that against the rest of the league,
Rask has a career record of 276-142-56, 2.24, .923, with 45 shutouts. But against Washington, he is 2-11-5, 3.10,
.889, with two shutouts. Against
individual teams, Rask has a higher GAA only against Anaheim (3.62 in eight
games), and only against the Ducks (.886) and Vancouver (.865 in ten games)
does he have a lower save percentage.
Anaheim and Caolorado are the only teams against which Rask has fewer
wins (one in eight games against each team).
Rask has been unbeatable so far on home ice, at least in
regulation, posting an 8-0-3, 2.05, .931 record with two shutouts. He has been more vulnerable on the road,
though, barely… 5-3-0, 2.39, .921. He has been universally stingy though, the
seven complete games he has in allowing one or no goals being tied for
second-most in the league, trailing only Winnipeg’s Connor Hellebuyck
(nine). Four of the instances came on
home ice, three on the road. Rask goes
into this game having allowed seven goals on 57 shots (.877 save percentage) in
his last two outings, both of them losses (0-1-1).
1. Boston is the only
team in the league that, through Monday’s games, is top-five in the league in
scoring offense (fifth), scoring defense (third), power play (third), and penalty
kill (fourth).
2. Only Philadelphia
has suffered more losses via the Gimmick (five) than Boston (four, tied with
Chicago and New Jersey). They are the only team with four or more Gimmick
losses without a win and only one of two with two or more losses without a win
(St. Louis is 0-3).
3. This might be a
game in which shots matter. Both Boston
and the Caps are tied for second fewest losses in regulation when outshooting
opponents (two; the Islanders have one).
4. Boston has the
second-best winning percentage in the league when allowing the first goal (.583/7-2-3),
trailing only the New York Islanders (.600/9-5-1).
5. Odd Bruins stat…
they recorded 40 or more shots in road games four times so far this season and
lost three of them (1-2-1).
1. Only the New York
Rangers among Eastern Conference teams have been charged with more penalties
(136) than the Caps (131), and in the league as a whole, only Calgary has been
charged with more minor penalties (124) than the Caps (119).
2. No team has missed
the net more than Caps when shooting the puck this season (420 missed shots).
3. If history is a
guide, don’t turn in early. The Caps and
Bruins rank 1-2 in third period goals, Boston leading the league with 43 and
the Caps tied with three other teams with 40.
4. The Caps have
out-shot opponents 17 times this season and earned points in 15 of those games
(13-2-2). The win total tops the league;
the total of games with points earned is tied with Pittsburgh (12-7-3).
5. The Caps time
differential on special teams (minus-33:17) is second-worst in the league,
trailing only San Jose (minus-38:01).
The Peerless’ Players to Ponder
Boston: David Pastrnak
Since 2005-2006, only three players in the league recorded
at least 25 goals in his team’s first 31 games – Alex Ovechkin (twice – 28 goals
in 2018-2019 and 26 goals in 2013-2014) and Sidney Crosby (26 goals in
2010-2011) are two of them. The other is
Boston’s David Pastrnak, who has 25 goals in 31 games to date. He has slowed down a bit, though. After putting up 11 goals in his first ten
games, he had six in his next ten and eight in his last 11 games. It is still a 55-goal pace that he put up in
his last 21 games, but what might be signaling a slowdown a bit stronger is
that he is without a goal in his last four games, his longest goal scoring
drought, so to speak, of the season.
Pastrnak has displayed a home-road split in his goal
scoring. In 18 games on home ice this
season he has 16 goals, well clear of the 13 goals on home ice scored by Auston
Matthews and Jack Eichel for most in the league. On the road, he has nine goals in 13 games
(as many as Caps’ defenseman John Carlson, but we will get to him in a
moment). That is still tied for
fifth-most in the league (with, among others, teammate Brad Marchand), but it
is less impressive than, say, the 15 goals scored in 17 road games by Alex
Ovechkin (most in the league).
Pastrnak is certainly no fluke or fly-by-night goal
scorer. He is almost certain to be a
30-plus goal scorer for the fourth straight season and is a good bet to shatter
his career best of 38 goals set last season in just 66 games. It does raise the question of whether, at
still the young age of 23, he is the next in a series of “heir apparents” to
Ovechkin as the league’s premier goal scorer.
Over the last four seasons, including this one, he is second to Ovechkin
in total goals scored (132 to 154 for Ovechkin), so he has to be considered a
contender. In 13 career games against
the Caps, Pastrnak is 4-5-9, minus-11.
Washington: John Carlson
John Carlson is putting up some wild numbers early, but
there is a distinct “home versus road” quality to them. On the road he is 9-18-27, plus-17, in 17
games. That would be first in goals,
first in assists, first in points, and first in plus-minus. And, he is shooting 18.0 percent, tops among
all defensemen with at least ten shots on goal.
Only once in 17 road games did he not record a point, that in Vancouver
on October 25th in a 6-5 Gimmick win.
Then there are the home games. In 15 games at Capital One Arena, Carlson is
2-14-16, plus-2. The goal total is tied
for 37th among defensemen, the assists still rank first, the points
rank second, and the plus-minus is tied for 88th. His 4.8 shooting percentage ranks tied for 93rd
(with, among others, Dmitry Orlov).
Carlson has points in eight of 15 games played on home ice. He has been all or nothing in wins on home
ice, posting four multi-point games in wins and four games without a point in
wins. He has four games on home ice with
four or more shots on goal in wins, four others in wins in which he had one or
no shots.
Then there is the odd plus-minus thing on home ice. Three times he has been plus-2 on home ice,
but he did not record a point. Three
times he has been minus-2, and he had points in two of those games. However, Carlson is 5-10-15, plus-12, in his
career against Boston. All of his career
goals against the Bruins have been scored on home ice.
In the end…
Boston does everything well – score, defend, play special
teams. The Caps just roll over opponents
like Lord Juggernaut’s cart.
When the Caps beat the Bruins in Boston, 3-2 in a Gimmick, in mid-November, it
was their 15th win in the last 16 games against the Bruins. They are 11-3-0 in their last 14 games
against the Bruins on home ice and will be trying to avoid consecutive losses
to Boston on home ice for the first time since April 2010 and the first time
losing consecutive games to Boston in regulation on home ice since the
1995-1996 season. It is the kind of odd
dominance one team has over another in team sports, even when both teams have a
history of strong play otherwise. There
is little reason to think it won’t continue in a manner pleasing to Caps fans.
Capitals 3 – Bruins 2
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