One step forward, two steps back: numbers for the morning after

November 21, 2017 8:53 am

The Caps had a chance on Monday night to build off a genuinely good victory over the Minnesota Wild and maybe soothe some fan worries. They didn’t do that. In a 4-1 loss to the Calgary Flames, they just doubled down on suck.

The Flames out-shot the Caps 39 to 30 and at five-on-five out-attempted them 47 to 37. That’s real bad.

I’m running out of ways to describe how bad Brooks Orpik has been this season. Eventually I’m just going to have a bullet dedicated to him saying, “yea he did the thing again”. Orpik, five-on-five, got out-attempted 22 to 7 and out-scoring-chanced 13 to 4.
The Caps would be a really good team if Dmitry Orlov and Matt Niskanen were a part of an alien species that never got tired. The pairing led Caps defensemen in basically every single category that I have ever used in these posts. However, Niskanen only played ten more seconds than Orpik did five-on-five. I don’t understand that.
The Flames came into Monday’s fixture with the league’s worst penalty kill. The Caps went 0 for 3 on the power play and gave up two power play goals themselves. Special teams have clearly not been good enough this season. It’s almost like Daniel Winnik, Marcus Johansson, and Justin Williams were really good special teams players.
Jaromir Jagr had more points (1) than 15 Caps skaters, and he’s 45 years old. That’s old enough to be the father of a lot of players he was playing with and against.
As you can tell by the last bullet, there aren’t many interesting numbers coming out of this game. The Capitals were really bad (again) and the Flames were good. The Caps are now 11-10-1 and very close to dipping under a .500 winning percentage over a fourth of a way into the season.