What a mess: numbers for the morning after

February 10, 2019 6:57 am

The Washington Capitals continue their entirely inconsistent play with a 5-4 loss to the Florida Panthers in overtime. The club really needs to get its act together as the standings race is tightening and their remaining schedule is probably even tougher.

The Panthers out-shot the Caps 31 to 30.

This was an utter defensive mess from really both teams, but the Caps were at fault many more times than the Panthers. The Capitals gave up 40 five-on-five scoring chances to the Panthers, an effort only “bested” this season by their 6-3 loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs on January 23 where they gave up 46. It’s a very similar story when it comes to five-on-five high danger chances as well. The Caps gave up 21 of those, again only “bested” by their 7-6 loss to the Pittsburgh Penguins on October 4 where they gave up 22. Poor, poor Braden Holtby on that heat map was engulfed in blue flame the entire night like he was at the Hateno or Akkala labs.
Now, we shall dig into which specific players were on the ice for a majority of that damage. Oh wait, what’s that? Pretty much every single player other than Christian Djoos and Tom Wilson were an utter mess defensively? Look, I personally think this team is fine going forward offensively, they have far too many elite offensive pieces to not be. It’s the defensive side of things throughout the lineup that has been a worry really since the jump. And when I say “defensive”, I want to make it clear that I’m not only referring to the defensemen on the roster. This is an issue that is spread throughout the five-man unit on the ice at any time.
Now what exactly is that issue? I think it’s a combination of a whole lot of things. Falling in love with lazy homerun stretch passes, not giving the cliche 100-percent effort on both sides of the puck, lack of discipline, funky defensive zone coverage, not utilizing the best lineup at your disposal, father time or injury coming for some of your key players, lack of real effective speed in the lineup, etc.
I want to go into that final example a little more and explain what I mean by “effective speed”. Wilson, Jakub Vrana or Andre Burakovsky on one of his good nights (which by the way are becoming more and more common) are great examples of effective speed. So, using your superior skating to your advantage by finding seams quicker, beating defenders to loose pucks, taking players on one-on-one successfully, creating odd man rushes, etc. Just “being fast” should not cut it in the NHL. I’m not going to name names, but there are at least two guys on the current Caps that I personally believe fit that description.
So Chris, what would your personal solution to all of this be? Firstly, get your in-house roster in order. The main things for me there are to play Jaskin and Dowd every night, play Djoos and Siegenthaler every night, keep Kuznetsov away from Ovechkin, and reduce Niskanen’s role against top lines. Secondly, I think two or three trades are needed. One to address the depth on the blueline and another to do the same for the forward core.
This has been a very negative post so far, so lets have some fun and speculate on trade options that probably will never happen. When we’re talking forwards there are high end options like Mark Stone or Matt Duchene, middle tier options like Tyler Toffoli, Wayne Simmonds, or Marcus Johansson, and finally lower tier options like Carl Hagelin or Richard Panik. Defensively, I’m not going to try and rank these dudes, but guys like Jay Bouwmeester, Alec Martinez, Duncan Keith, Alex Edler, or Mike Green could be available. Let me know in the comments about some other names y’all are thinking about.
Now that I’ve talked at you without really addressing any real numbers, lets get into some short highlights. Shoutout to Holts as he became only the second goaltender in franchise history to play in 400 games with the club (Olaf Kolzig, 711 games). Dmitrij Jaskin also hit a milestone, playing in his 300th career game. Finally, happy 24th birthday to Andre.