Last night the Caps polished off a highly unsuccessful California road trip with a 5-2 loss to the Anaheim Ducks. This was the first Shattless game that the Caps have played since acquiring Kevin Shattenkirk, as the veteran defenseman sat for the first game of a two-game suspension.

Reasonable minds can disagree about how concerned we should be after the team’s fourth straight loss and Alex Ovechkin’s tenth straight goalless game, but the players are looking to course correct as Brooks Orpik called them out and they had a closed-doors meeting after the game.

The Caps’ seemed out of sync from the get-go in this game, with their execution sorely lacking. This was evidenced in their missed shots. Halfway through the game the Caps were hanging tight with the Ducks in terms of shot attempts, actually ahead 21 to 20 at five-on-five. Shots on goal at that time were 14 to eight, however, in favor of Anaheim.

Key Stats

• The Caps’ rate of goal-scoring is barely half of what it was in late January. Talk of five-goal-per-game streaks feels like ancient history as the Caps have scored 2.7 five-on-five goals per 60 minutes over the last 15 games, compared to a peak of 4.5 as of January 23rd. They are still humming along at a better clip than early December, with their season minimum of 1.8 goals per 60. That said, there is good reason to believe that the bye week did not “break” the Capitals.
• The new lines haven’t been bad, from a possession point of view. This weekend the Caps debuted some interesting new lines… some of which had never set foot on the ice together. Well, the results weren’t good (with the Caps getting outscored nine to four), but the process wasn’t all that bad. The new Ovechkin line was cumulatively plus-five in five-on-five shot attempts on the weekend, and the new Backstrom line was plus-ten. Some of that could be score effects, as the Caps played from behind for significant portions of the weekend.
• This is the first four-game losing streak of the last two seasons. In fact, this is the first four-game pointless streak the Caps have endured since the first month of the 2014-2015 season, when they dropped four consecutive games in regulation and then a fifth in OT from October 26th to November 4th. The losses were to Vancouver (4-2), Detroit (4-2), Tampa (4-3), Arizona (6-5), and Calgary (4-3 OT). They broke the streak with a 3-2 win against Chicago.

Unsung Hero of the Game

We love Nate Schmidt, and we are giving him this award after stepping back in the lineup for Shattenkirk. Really this could go to the pairing of Schmidt and Brooks Orpik, who were plus-12 in shot attempts at five-on-five, the only Caps pairing above zero. They were on for one goal for and none against, and they saw at least a couple of minutes against every Anaheim skater. It’d be hard to argue that a player had a bad night when he saw the ice tilted that much.

Trend to Watch

We’ve talked a lot about how excellent Braden Holtby has been this season, but guess who is currently fourth in the league in five-on-five save percentage among goalies playing at least 700 minutes. That would be Philip Grubauer. With a .939 team save percentage at five-on-five the Caps are first in the league in that statistic, with quite a margin to second-place Chicago at .934. The Caps also still lead the league in goals against per 60, by an equally large margin. Grubauer is a big part of that dominance in net and stinginess in allowing goals. Here is a table of the five best goalies this season in the above 700 minute five-on-five stats:

There will always be a “chicken or the egg” discussion around Grubi, and the debate centers around whether the Caps’ solid team defense props up his numbers or if it’s the other way around. Well, we can begin to hint at the answer by looking at Corsica’s “expected goals” statistic, which uses shot quality to model how many goals a team should be allowing, on average. The Caps are 14th in the league in expected goals against, compared to first in actual. This doesn’t mean the Caps’ defense is actually bad, but it does suggest that both Holtby and Grubauer are more than pulling their weight. With a string of netminders that includes Varlamov, Neuvirth, Holtby, Grubauer, and the sure-thing prospect Ilya Samsonov (along with useful prospects Pheonix Copley and Vitek Vanecek), Washington is indeed a goalie factory.

Full Coverage of Caps at Ducks

Stats courtesy of Corsica.Hockey and NaturalStatTrick.

Headline Photo by Debora Robinson/NHLI.