Photo: Bruce Kluckhohn
The Capitals lost all four games this week. They weren’t even playing particularly good teams. None of the Caps’ opponents ranked in the top half of possession teams. None of them had a positive goal differential. None of them were in the playoff picture. One of them was Buffalo.
But they all beat the Caps.
That kind of stuff happens when your team shoots under 3% (vs Ottawa and Buffalo) or saves under 90% (vs Carolina and Minnesota). The good news is that those percentages jump around all the time, and they don’t mean much for the future success of the team. The bad news is the Caps took two points from a week where they easily could have had eight. That’s gonna hurt in April.
These are the numbers as of noon on Sunday, January 5th. The sample is restricted to 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, week 12, week 13
Player | Pos | GP | TOI | GF | GA | SA% | Sh% | Sv% | PDO | ZS% |
Aaron Volpatti | L | 32 | 151.9 | 3 | 4 | 36.9% | 5.8% | 94.9% | 100.7 | 51.7% |
Alex Ovechkin | L | 40 | 379.8 | 8 | 15 | 49.6% | 3.8% | 93.1% | 96.8 | 58.9% |
Brooks Laich | C | 28 | 218.7 | 7 | 8 | 40.9% | 8.4% | 93.7% | 102.1 | 50.2% |
Eric Fehr | R | 33 | 266.6 | 8 | 12 | 52.3% | 5.8% | 90.8% | 96.5 | 49.2% |
Jason Chimera | L | 42 | 349.6 | 18 | 20 | 46.5% | 9.9% | 90.2% | 100.1 | 45.5% |
Jay Beagle | C | 22 | 128.7 | 2 | 3 | 40.3% | 4.5% | 95.2% | 99.8 | 54.9% |
Joel Ward | R | 42 | 336.2 | 15 | 19 | 48.7% | 8.7% | 89.8% | 98.5 | 47.2% |
Marcus Johansson | C | 42 | 367.2 | 11 | 17 | 49.2% | 6.4% | 91% | 97.4 | 53.6% |
Martin Erat | R | 39 | 287.4 | 11 | 13 | 48.9% | 8.1% | 91.8% | 100 | 49.5% |
Michael Latta | C | 17 | 67.6 | 3 | 4 | 48.1% | 10.3% | 88.2% | 98.6 | 48.5% |
Mikhail Grabovski | C | 40 | 341.1 | 15 | 12 | 50.7% | 8% | 93.4% | 101.5 | 50% |
Nicklas Backstrom | C | 42 | 385.1 | 13 | 15 | 49.2% | 6.3% | 93.2% | 99.5 | 56.8% |
Tom Wilson | R | 42 | 191.6 | 7 | 6 | 40.6% | 10.6% | 93.8% | 104.4 | 57.4% |
Troy Brouwer | R | 42 | 331.9 | 11 | 10 | 46% | 8.1% | 94.4% | 102.5 | 49.4% |
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% |
John Erskine | D | 17 | 174.3 | 8 | 10 | 48.9% | 9.4% | 88.8% | 98.2 | 50.8% |
John Carlson | D | 42 | 433.5 | 14 | 23 | 44.7% | 6.9% | 90.7% | 97.5 | 49.2% |
Karl Alzner | D | 42 | 441.4 | 14 | 16 | 44.5% | 7.1% | 93.2% | 100.3 | 49.6% |
Mike Green | D | 39 | 458.6 | 12 | 15 | 51.7% | 5.1% | 93.6% | 98.7 | 55.9% |
Steve Oleksy | D | 33 | 293.8 | 18 | 11 | 47.5% | 13% | 92.8% | 105.7 | 52.2% |
Dmitry Orlov | D | 16 | 203 | 4 | 7 | 52.5% | 3.7% | 93.3% | 97.1 | 48.2% |
There’s Mike Green not defusing odd-man breaks:
And Dmitry Orlov joining the offense at the wrong time:
Caps lose again. Holtby stops 6 of 11. Ovi now a minus-17. Only five NHL forwards have worse plus-minus. Limited stat, I know. But still.
— Josh Yohe (@JoshYohe_PGH) January 5, 2014
Russian Machine Never Breaks is not associated with the Washington Capitals; Monumental Sports, the NHL, or its properties. Not even a little bit.
All original content on russianmachineneverbreaks.com is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0)– unless otherwise stated or superseded by another license. You are free to share, copy, and remix this content so long as it is attributed, done for noncommercial purposes, and done so under a license similar to this one.
Share On