The Peerless Prognosticator is ON THE AIR!!!
The Washington Capitals return home from their four-game road trip to host the Vegas Golden Knights at Capital One Arena. The Caps will be playing the back half of a back-to-back set of games after taking on the Carolina Hurricanes in Raleigh on Monday night. Washington will be Vegas’ first stop on a five-game road trip after sweeping a two-game home stand with wins over Anaheim and Winnipeg.
Vegas carries an 8-2-0 record into this meeting, and their success is largely a product of stifling defense. Their goaltending work as been of the platoon variety, Logan Thompson getting six starts so far and Adin Hill getting four. Both have been sparkling in net. Thompson is 4-2-0, 1.69, .943, with two shutouts; while Hill is 4-0-0, 1.72, .940. The tandem ranks third and fifth, respectively, in goals against average (minimum: 200 minutes played), and fourth and fifth, respectively, in save percentage. Thompson is the only goaltender in the league with more than one shutout through Sunday’s games.
Thompson’s success is a bit of a surprise. The 25-year old was undrafted out of Canadian junior hockey (three seasons with the Brandon Wheat Kings of the Western Hockey League) and bounced around minor league hockey with stops in the ECHL with the Adirondack Thunder and South Carolina Stingrays, and stops in the AHL with the Hershey Bears (for whom he did not play), Binghamton Devils, and Henderson Silver Knights while getting one game with the Vegas Golden Knights in 2020-2021 after he signed a two-year entry-level contract in July 2020. He appeared in 19 games last season and posted a record of 17-10-5, 2.68, .914, with one shutout. He is 1-0-0, 2.86, .867, in his only career appearance against the Capitals.
Adin Hill has more experience than Thompson, but he has had difficulty finding a home. A third-round draft pick (76th overall) of the Arizona Coyotes in the 2015 Entry Draft, he played for four seasons with the Coyotes without ever appearing in as many as 20 games in a season. In July 2021 he was traded with a seventh-round draft pick in 2022 to the San Jose Sharks for a second-round draft pick in 2022. He played in a career high 25 games with the Sharks last season, going 10-11-1, 2.66, .906, with two shutouts, a record not impressive enough to keep him from being traded to Vegas for a fourth-round pick in the 2024 draft. He has been consistent with the Golden Knights so far, allowing two goals in each of his first three appearances before holding Winnipeg to a single goal on 24 shots in his last outing, a 2-1 win on Sunday. Hill is 0-2-0, 3.08, .875 in two career appearances against Washington.
Jack Eichel seems to have settled into his spot with the Golden Knights. It was a rocky road for Eichel, a former second-overall draft pick who toiled for a Buffalo Sabres club that seemed to be making no progress toward competitiveness, who endured surgery and rehabilitation to address a spinal disc herniation, who grew increasingly unhappy with the direction his team was taking (and going public with it ), who was stripped of his captaincy after failing a physical and being placed on long-term injured reserve, who was then traded to Vegas, only to undergo another round of surgery before he finally took the ice with the Golden Knights last February. He played in 34 games, going 14-11-25, plus-3, scoring at a pace consistent with that which he had with the Sabres in his best seasons there. So far this season he is 4-6-10, plus-8, his ten points leading the team, and his plus-8 rating second on the club. He does not yet have a power play goal, but his three power play points is tied for the team lead. Eichel already has four multi-point games, although only one of them is on the road, that being in a 5-2 win over Seattle on October 15th. Eichel is 3-10-13, minus-6, in 17 career games against the Caps.
1. Vegas has allowed only 12 5-on-5 goals in ten games.
2. The Golden Knights’ first period goal differential of plus-10 (12 goals for, two against) is the largest in the league, by far (Boston: plus-7).
3. Vegas scored first in seven of ten games so far, tied for most instances in the league.
4. Twenty-one skater have played for Vegas so far. Of that number, 19 have at least one point. Only Jake Leschushyn (two games) and Ben Hutton (one game) are without one.
5. Vegas wins blowouts. They are 5-0-0 in games decided by two or more goals, but they are just 3-2-0 in one-goal games.
1. Washington has wins in their last three home games and, after losing their first home game of the season, have a .750 home points percentage, tied for sixth best in the league.
2. The Caps’ 3.75 goals per game on home ice is the sixth best scoring offense on home ice in the league.
3. This game will complete the Caps’ second back-to-back set of games. In their first, the first two games of the season, the Capitals lost to Boston and Toronto.
4. The Caps have only one first period goal scored in four home games. Only Carolina has fewer (none, pending the result between the Caps and the Hurricanes on Monday night in Carolina).
5. Washington has not yet been out-shot on home ice. They out-shot opponents three times (2-1-0 record) and were even in shots once (1-0-0).
The Peerless’ Players to Ponder
Vegas: Chandler Stephenson
Who would have thought it? When Chandler Stephenson was a Capital, he was tucked away as a bottom six forward who, for whatever reason, was unable to generate much in terms of his own offense. In 168 games with the Caps, he was 14-19-33, plus-2, averaging 11:40 in ice time per game. He recorded only 95 shots on goal in those 168 games (0.57 shots per game) and never had more than six goals or more than 18 points in any of his four-plus seasons as a Capital.
And then he was traded to Vegas in December 2019 for a fifth-round pick in the 2021 Entry Draft (that pick was eventually turned into Michael Raffl, who played in ten games for the Caps). Stephenson finished the 2019-2020 season going 8-14-22, plus-19, in 41 games, setting personal bests in goals, assists, and points with one franchise in half a season’s worth of games. He has not slowed down. In 187 games as a Golden Knight, Stephenson is 47-82-129, plus-52, with ten power play goals (he had none as a Capital), 12 power play assists (none as a Cap), and is averaging 18:09 in ice time per game as a top-six forward for Vegas. He is already 4-4-8, plus-6, in ten games so far. He had a five-game points streak snapped in Vegas’ 2-1 loss to the Winnipeg Jets in their last contest. Stephenson is 1-0-1, even, in three career games against Washington.
Washington: Evgeny Kuznetsov
After eight games last season, Evgeny Kuznetsov was 5-7-12, plus-6, and the Caps were rolling with a 5-0-3 record in those games. This season, Kuznetsov is 0-5-5, plus-1, in eight games (he missed one game to a suspension). The Caps are 5-3-0 in those eight games. Would Kuznetsov have been worth three standings points to the Caps if his start resembled last season’s? Perhaps. But a slow start is hardly what this team needs with Nicklas Backstrom and Tom Wilson out since the season started, Connor Brown suffering an injury in his fourth game of the season that will keep him out for an extended period, and now T.J. Oshie out “indefinitely” with a lower-body injury. With the Caps losing forwards with frightening regularity, getting Kuznetsov performing at a higher level is going to be critical for the Caps to sustain a playoff-eligible position in the standings, or at least stay close until their health improves.
Kuznetsov’s start has been disturbing in that October, even with this poor start, has been his best career month in goals per game (0.33), and it is the only month over his career in which he averaged more than a point per game (1.01). November has been less productive, Kuznetsov averaging 0.22 goals per game and 0.84 points per game over his career. It is hard to pinpoint what the problem or problems are, although his shooting frequency is down. In eight games in October last season, he had five goals on 25 shots, one of those goals on a power play and another shorthanded. In eight October games so far this season, he has no goals on 16 shots. It has not been a matter of reduced time on special teams, at least not a significant reduction. Last year he averaged 3:44 in power play time for the season, and while his role has changed somewhat this season, he is still averaging 2:54 per game on power plays. He started getting more shorthanded responsibility last season, averaging 1:07 in ice time per game when shorthanded, and his shorthanded ice time has actually gone up a tick this season (1:12). Whatever the reason for the sluggish start, the Caps need to get Kuznetsov playing on a more customary level of production. He is 3-7-10, plus-5, in seven career games against Vegas.
In the end…
Pending the results in Carolina, the Caps have a chance to get out of the back-to-back set of games with 14 points for the season and perhaps the Metropolitan Division lead. That would be quite a feat and a very welcome development, since it would give the Caps some momentum heading into what should be, on paper, an easier end to the week on the schedule.
Capitals 4 – Golden Knights 2
