Yo, I need to draw your attention to this quote from George McPhee, reported by Katie Carrera on Wednesday night.
“We play a system where teams get probably more shots the way we play but most of them are from the outside, we’ll allow those. In some ways that might be better for this particular goaltender.”
This is not the sort of thing a professional hockey person outside of Toronto should say. This is not a thing that any grownup with even a passing acquaintance with the concept of probability should say.
Allowing more shots is never good. Every shot carries with it a discrete chance that it could go in the net. More shots: more goals.
And the Caps don’t possess some newly discovered, sui generis ability to limit their opponents’ shot quality with reliability. If they did, we’d see it in the stats. So George McPhee should not be saying the equivalent of “We let the other guy take a crazy ton of shots because we’re the first team in hockey history that is actually magical.”
Nope, nope, nope. And Wednesday’s loss to Philadelphia is evidence of the cosmic wrongness.
Overall the Caps allow 32.7 shots on goal per game. That’s the fourth worst in the league. This is not a good thing. Spinning it any other way is futile. Moar shots by the other guy = moar bad. Put it on a t-shirt.
And the whole thing about keeping the shots to the outside is malarkey. No one actually does that with any consistency, and the Caps are not even a little good at it. Just look at Wednesday’s circus in Philadelphia.
Goal 1: Claude Giroux
Jack Hillen loses a board battle bad at the blue line. Claude Giroux takes the puck in all alone for a breakaway to beat Holtby. Alex Ovechkin plays defense with his hands and stick. 17 feet.
Goal 2: Jakub Voracek, PPG
Karl Alzner fails to clear the puck out of the zone. Instead, he knocks it right to a Flyers defender. The Caps chase the puck and get caught out of position, particularly Brooks Laich. Voracek receives the puck at the point, wide open, pushed to the top of the circles — right in the middle of the ice — and scores a clean goal on the short side.
Goal 3: Claude Giroux, again
Mike Green coughs up the puck behind the goal line, gets cross-checked from behind and removed from the play. Giroux scores from a couple feet out. Then he kicks Green in the head. 24 feet.
Goal 4: Adam Hall
Braden Holtby chucks it around the glass. Four Caps cannot settle the puck. Turnover…
Then Adam Hall sets up in Holtby’s grill, thoroughly unguarded. As Michael Raffl winds up at the point, you’ll notice every Capital is above the face-off dot. Hall deflects it past a helpless Holtby. 11 feet.
Goal 5: Jakub Voracek, again
The third line is on the ice. Eric Fehr fumbles a pass at center ice. Playing out of position as a center (Adam Oates’ experiment), Fehr loses his man and lets Jakub Voracek to walk in alone on a semi-breakaway. 32 feet.
That’s five goals, all from the inside.
The Caps aren’t limiting their opponents’ shots. The Caps aren’t good at keeping shots to the outside. The Caps aren’t hockey unicorns impervious to the laws of probability.
“We play a system where teams get probably more shots the way we play but most of them are from the outside, we’ll allow those. In some ways that might be better for this particular goaltender.”
That’s in print now. People are actually gonna read that. Yeesh.
This article has been a Peter Hassett/Ian Oland jam session.
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