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Holtby and his meh teammates: numbers for the morning after

By Chris Cerullo

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February 22, 2019 11:20 am

The Washington Capitals continued their trek through this seemingly never ending road trip by downing the Toronto Maple Leafs 3-2, bringing their recent traveling record to that same scoreline. They’ll look to finish this thing off with a bang in Buffalo on Saturday.

The Leafs out-shot the Caps 42 to 28.

  • What’s with the title Chris, the Caps won again? Well, let me throw some numbers at you real quick. In the Caps last 25 games at five-on-five (score and venue adjusted), they own a 47.1-percent shot attempt percentage (25th), a 47.1-percent scoring chance for percentage (23rd), and a 45.7-percent high danger chance for percentage (24th). Y’all that’s a really long stretch of games to be not even mediocre. Now I was singing this exact same tune at this exact same time of the season last year and we all know how that whole thing panned out, so lets not go full meltdown especially considering the position within the Metro Division that the Caps still hold.
  • Braden Holtby and his 40 saves definitely were the main factor in this victory and I actually don’t have that much of a problem with how the Caps played at even strength for the first forty minutes. I thought the penalty kill was damn lucky to not concede two goals, but what’s new there.
  • Now, lets talk about the trade the Caps made. Carl Hagelin is objectively a good, little piece for a team like the Caps. He may only have two goals in 38 games this season with some health questions, but the dude has speed in bundles and has scored 10 or more goals in six of his eight career NHL seasons. In the past he has been an ace penalty killer, but will that translate over well into the Caps penalty killing system? I have my doubts. Will he have an impact like Michal Kempny did last season? Realistically, no chance.
  • In my personal opinion, Hagelin is not an upgrade on any of the Caps current top nine wingers. However, I don’t think the team sees it that way because they sorta had to move a lot of pieces around to bring him in. A top four defenseman like Kempny last season is going to impact the state of a team much more than a bottom six winger. With all that being said, I really hope the Caps aren’t done making some moves before the deadline.

  • Alex Ovechkin snagged career goal number 650 and now has goals in four straight games.
  • Brett Connolly scored his fifteenth goal of the season, giving him that same number of goals in all three seasons he has played with the Caps.
  • Apologies for a bit of a scatterbrained post here, but I feel like that encompasses the current Caps pretty well.

Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com and NaturalStatTrick.com.

Full RMNB Coverage of Caps at Maple Leafs

Headline photo: Kevin Sousa

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