The Peerless Prognosticator is ON THE AIR!!!
The Washington Capitals will wrap up their annual California
trip on Friday night when they visit the Anaheim Ducks at Honda Center. The Caps go into the contest winners of five
in a row, sharing the second longest winning streak in the league at the moment
with Philadelphia to Boston’s eight-gamer.
Since winning consecutive games to end October and begin November, the
Ducks have struggled, going 3-6-4.
Then and Now…
The Caps and Ducks will meet for the 39th time in
the regular season on Friday night.
Washington has an 18-18-1 (one tie) record in the all-time series, 8-9-0
(one tie) on the road. Since 2005-2006,
the Caps are 12-7-1 overall against the Ducks, 6-3-0 in Anaheim.
Active Leaders vs. Opponent…
Noteworthy Opponents…
The list of all-time goal scoring leaders for the Ducks is
sprinkled with familiar names. Teemu
Selanne (457 goals as a Ducks, tops all-time), Corey Perry, Paul Kariya, Ryan
Getzlaf. Even casual fans would
recognize these names. Fewer would
recognize that of Rickard Rakell. Now in
his eighth year with the Ducks, the former first-round draft pick (30th
overall by Anaheim in 2011) ranks seventh on the all-time Ducks goal scoring
list (122). He might have ranked higher
but for a setback last season. After
three seasons in which his goal scoring progressed from 20 goals to 33 and then
to 34, Rakell posted 18 goals in 69 games, losing 13 games to an ankle injury last
year.
This season, Rakell gave indications that he was back to his
productive ways with three goals in his first seven games, but then he went
nine games with four assists and no goals on 19 shots. He had points in three of those nine games,
all Anaheim wins, in a stretch in which they were just 4-4-1. He broke out of that slump with a goal in a
4-2 loss to Minnesota on November 5th, and that set off one of those
perverse kinds of stretches that befuddle observers. Starting with that goal against Minnesota,
Rakell has five goal in his last 12 games.
All of those goals came in losses (0-4-1). The Ducks are 3-2-2 in the seven games in
that stretch in which he did not score a goal.
In ten career games against the Caps, Rakell is 3-3-6, minus-3.
Through Wednesday’s games, 18 rookies had reached the
ten-point mark. One of them had the
almost comic-book hero sounding name of forward Sam Steel, who is 2-8-10 in 24
games to date. Steel was the last pick
of the first round in the 2016 Entry Draft, a product of the Regina Pats
program in Canadian junior hockey. He
spent two more years with the Pats, posting 83 goals in 120 games before
graduating to the San Diego Gulls of the AHL last season, where he went
17-17-34 in 47 games. Steel also dressed
for 22 games with the Ducks last season, not far under the maximum number of NHL
games played to qualify as a rookie this season (25), and went 6-5-11.
Steel started this season with a 17-game streak without a
goal, but he did manage to record eight assists over that stretch. He scored his first goal of the season on
November 18th in the Ducks’ first meeting against the Caps this
season, his first career power play goal 5-2 loss in Washington. His other goal in his last seven games was
also recorded in a loss, a 4-3 Gimmick loss to Arizona on November 27th. That November contest against the Caps is
his only career appearance to date against Washington.
The 2012 Entry Draft was loaded with defensemen. Eight of the first ten picks were blueliners. Among them was Hampus Lindholm, a defenseman
out of Rögle BK in the Swedish Hockey League, taken by the Ducks with the sixth
overall pick and the fourth defenseman taken in that draft behind Ryan Murray
(Columbus), Griffin Reinhart (New York Islanders), and Morgan Rielly
(Toronto). After spending a year with
the Norfolk Admirals in the AHL, he moved up to the Ducks for the 2013-2014
season and has been a fixture on the blue line ever since. In six-plus seasons with the Ducks, Lindholm
already ranks fourth all-time in games played by an Anaheim defensemen (467),
fourth in goals (48), fourth in points (183), first in plus-minus (plus-88),
ninth in power play goals (10), tied with Chris Pronger for sixth in
game-winning goals (eight), and he is one of four defensemen since the league
began recording time on ice statistics in 1997-1998 to record more than 10,000
minutes of ice time.
This season, Lindholm’s performance breaks into two
parts. In neither part does he have a
goal, but the assist patterns are different.
He posted single assists in six of his first nine games this season,
five of them in Duck wins. In his last
11 games he also has six assists, but those came in a pair of three-assist
games, one in a 5-2 win over Colorado on October 26th, and the other
in a 4-2 win over Los Angeles last Monday.
Lindholm is 4-8-12, plus-7, in 12 career games against the Capitals.
1. As much as Anaheim
has struggle this season, their home record is not bad. At 8-5-2 on home ice, their 18 standings
points earned at home are tied for tenth through Wednesday’s games.
2. What the Ducks do
not seem to be doing at home, though, is “playing” well, at least in terms of
shots for and against. They have allowed
54 more shots on goal on home ice (482) than they have recorded (428), and
their minus-70 in shot attempts at 5-on-5 is fourth-worst in the league, owing
to a second-highest total of 737 shot attempts allowed at fives.
3. The Ducks are also
a team that enjoys few chances to make good on power plays. They have had 38 power play opportunities in
15 games, the third-lowest total of power play chances on home ice tin the
league. Small wonder that their four
power play goals scored on home ice are tied with Ottawa for fewest in the
league, and the Senators have played three fewer home games.
4. How weak is four
power play goals on home ice? The Ducks
have almost as many empty net goals on home ice (three); only Chicago has more
(four).
5. Anaheim spends a
lot of time killing penalties at home, 81:46, in fact. That’s the fifth highest shorthanded ice time
total on home ice in the league. Of
course, one could reason that away that the Ducks kill a lot of penalties, but
their home penalty kill ranks just 15th (83.3 percent).
1. Through Wednesday’s
games, no team had as many players with at least 20 points as the Caps: John Carlson
(42), Alex Ovechkin (31), Evgeny Kuznetsov (28), Jakub Vrana (25), T.J. Oshie
(22), and Tom Wilson (20).
2. Tom Wilson’s empty
net goal against Los Angeles on Wednesday was the Caps’ sixth empty netter on
the road this season, most in the league in road games. Their nine empty netters overall also lead
the league.
3. Only Vancouver has
been shorthanded more times on the road (66) than the Caps (59, tied with
Calgary).
4. Turnovers are a
feature of Caps road games. Their 168
charged giveaways in road games are most in the league, while their 118
takeaways are tied for second with Calgary, behind Edmonton (125).
5. The Caps remain
skilled marksmen on the road, their 11.9 shooting percentage tops in the
league.
The Peerless’ Players to Ponder
Anaheim: Ryan Miller
John Gibson is ill. It has kept him off the ice for several days, and Ryan Miller is expected to get the start against the Caps on Friday
night if Gibson is not sufficiently recovered.
It is not as if Miller is an unknown to the Caps. If he does get the call, it would be his 35th
career appearance against the Caps, third-most among active goalies, behind
Henrik Lundqvist (42) and Marc-Andre Fleury (41). And although no one wants to entertain the
possibility, a win would make him the third goalie with 20 or more career wins
against the Caps (Fleury has 23, Lundqvist has 22). Then again, if he loses in regulation (cue
the cheering Caps fans), he would stand alone among active goalies in career
losses in regulation to the Caps (he would have 15).
Miller is past his time as a number one goalie, but he has
settled into his role as mentor and backup for Gibson. In two-plus seasons in Anaheim, he is
24-14-10 with a 2.60 goals against average in 56 appearances. His .919 save percentage with the Ducks is
the best he has among the four franchises for which he has played (Buffalo,
Vancouver, and St. Louis in addition to Anaheim). His record this season was disturbing to
start. He stopped 26 of 27 shots in his first appearance of the season, a 2-1
win over Columbus on October 11th.
But after that, the goals allowed totals just grew. He allowed two in three consecutive games
(one a 20 minute stint in relief of Gibson against Nashville in a 6-1 loss on
October 22nd), then it was three, then four, and finally six in a
6-2 loss to Tampa Bay on November 23rd. He did, however, stop 34 of 36 shots in his
last outing, a 4-2 win over Los Angeles on Monday. Miller is 19-14-0, 2.53, .916 with three
shutouts in 34 career appearances against the Caps.
Washington: Travis Boyd
When you are drafted in the sixth round, and you are
assigned the sweater number 72, the writing is on the wall that your prospects
as an NHL player are, at best, uncertain.
That was how Travis Boyd started his climb to the NHL, taken out of the USNTDP
program with the 177th overall pick of the 2011 Entry Draft and
getting that comparatively high sweater number than often identifies the player
who is not expected to contend soon, if at all, for a roster spot (yes, there
are exceptions like John Carlson’s “74” or Braden Holtby’s “70”). And it was not as if the climb to the NHL was
easy or brief for Boyd. He spent the
next four years in the University of Minnesota program, then on to the Hershey
Bears in the AHL. He did not reach the
NHL until the 2017-2018 season, when he appeared in eight regular season games
for the Caps. But he also got a game in
the 2018 playoffs, skating 12 minutes in the Caps’ 2-1 overtime win over
Pittsburgh to clinch the Eastern Conference semifinal series against the
Penguins. Boyd followed that up with a
53-game season with the Caps last year, displaying a scoring touch (five goals,
20 points) that might not have been expected.
His growth and development presented the Caps with what
would become a difficult decision that the team would finally make this past
week. Who would the team take moving
ahead as the 13th forward, a situation that came to a head when Carl
Hagelin was about to be returned to action from injured reserve? Would it be Boyd or Chandler Stephenson? In no small part, it was a matter of
managing the salary cap, and Boyd’s $800,000 cap hit was more manageable than
Stephenson’s $1.05 million cap hit. Stephenson
was traded to Vegas for a fifth-round draft pick; Boyd remained a Capital. Boyd is a bit behind last year’s goal-scoring
pace, with just one goal in 15 games.
His point production is a bit ahead of last year, though, with seven
points in 15 games. He is in a bit of a
slump, though, with one point in his last seven games after going 1-5-6 in his
first eight games of the season. Boyd
has one assist in his only appearance against the Ducks, in the 5-2 win over
Anaheim on November 18th this season.
In the end…
Anaheim resembles the Caps just defeated, the Los Angeles
Kings, but are slightly better. A little
more offense (2.68 goals per game to 2.52), a little more defense (2.96 goals
per game to 3.31), equally anemic power play (11.3 percent to 11.2 percent),
and iffy penalty killing (77.2 percent to 75.3 percent). The difference, though, is that the Caps were
sandblasted by the Ducks in their last three visits to Anaheim, losing by scores
of 5-2, 4-0, and last year a 5-2 margin.
It would do well for the Caps to take the Ducks seriously, even if they
are struggling, and the team might be looking forward to getting home after a
four-game road swing. Let’s flip the
script.
Capitals 5 – Ducks 2
No comments:
Post a Comment