Photo: Patrick McDermott
Like I said the other night, the Washington Capitals never make it easy. They took five points from four games this week, but they hardly had the puck at all. On Friday, the Hurricanes neutralized Alex Ovechkin on the power play, but three other guys scored instead. On Saturday, their possession time was barely one third of the game, and yet they scored four goals during even strength.
This team doesn’t make any sense.
And now, as we near the halfway mark, it looks like we’ve got some full-blown #goaliedrama going on, which is just baffling to me as it seems to miss the entire point of everything we’ve learned from these snapshots. Usually, I reserve this space for skaters only, but we’re making an exception today as we talk about Caps goalies. Let’s get it on.
These are the numbers as of noon on Sunday, December 22nd. Actually more like 10am because I still gotta do some Christmas shopping. Our sample is 5-on-5 play while the score is close. That means within one goal in the first two periods and tied in the third. That way special teams, blowouts, and comebacks don’t color the data. Stats of note are highlighted in powderpuff pink and discussed below.
See previous snapshots: week 1, week 2, week 3, week 4, week 5, week 6, week 7, week 8, week 9, week 10, week 11
Player | Pos | GP | TOI | GF | GA | SA% | Sh% | Sv% | PDO | ZS% |
Brooks Laich | C | 25 | 194.5 | 4 | 7 | 40.3% | 5.6% | 93.8% | 99.4 | 47.6% |
Marcus Johansson | C | 36 | 303.1 | 8 | 15 | 47.6% | 5.8% | 90.7% | 96.5 | 54.4% |
Mikhail Grabovski | C | 34 | 274.3 | 14 | 11 | 47.8% | 10.4% | 92.8% | 103.2 | 49.5% |
Nicklas Backstrom | C | 36 | 318 | 10 | 14 | 47.5% | 6.1% | 92.6% | 98.7 | 57.4% |
Alex Ovechkin | L | 34 | 311.1 | 7 | 14 | 48% | 4.3% | 92.5% | 96.8 | 58.8% |
Jason Chimera | L | 36 | 282.9 | 15 | 16 | 45.4% | 10.6% | 90.3% | 100.9 | 43.9% |
Eric Fehr | R | 27 | 201.2 | 7 | 11 | 50.4% | 7.5% | 88.9% | 96.4 | 47.8% |
Joel Ward | R | 36 | 270.4 | 12 | 15 | 48.4% | 9% | 89.7% | 98.7 | 45.2% |
Martin Erat | R | 33 | 233 | 10 | 10 | 48.8% | 9.3% | 92.2% | 101.5 | 48.3% |
Tom Wilson | R | 36 | 154.6 | 5 | 5 | 39.1% | 9.6% | 93.6% | 103.2 | 54.2% |
Troy Brouwer | R | 36 | 271.2 | 9 | 9 | 42.4% | 9% | 94% | 103 | 49.7% |
Michael Latta | C | 17 | 67.6 | 3 | 4 | 48.1% | 10.3% | 88.2% | 98.6 | 48.5% |
Aaron Volpatti | L | 29 | 128.7 | 3 | 4 | 35.7% | 6.8% | 94.2% | 101 | 48% |
Jay Beagle | C | 16 | 88.2 | 1 | 2 | 37.6% | 3.4% | 95.3% | 98.8 | 50.7% |
Player | Pos | GP | TOI | GF | GA | SA% | Sh% | Sv% | PDO | ZS% |
Nate Schmidt | D | 28 | 270.8 | 12 | 10 | 51.4% | 8.6% | 93.1% | 101.6 | 55.3% |
Alexander Urbom | D | 20 | 145.1 | 6 | 8 | 42.1% | 10.3% | 91% | 101.4 | 50.8% |
John Carlson | D | 36 | 358.4 | 12 | 21 | 42.9% | 7.7% | 90.1% | 97.8 | 48.4% |
Karl Alzner | D | 36 | 368.6 | 12 | 14 | 43.5% | 7.6% | 93.1% | 100.7 | 49.1% |
Mike Green | D | 33 | 366.6 | 10 | 12 | 50.2% | 5.4% | 93.7% | 99.1 | 55.8% |
Steve Oleksy | D | 27 | 225.6 | 14 | 9 | 46.1% | 14% | 92.2% | 106.2 | 49.2% |
Dmitry Orlov | D | 10 | 108 | 2 | 5 | 45.5% | 4.2% | 91.2% | 95.4 | 41.5% |
(The super low dip was Pittsburgh, whom the Caps will play again in 20 days!)
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