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Still not good: numbers for the morning after

By Chris Cerullo

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August 15, 2020 7:00 am

The Washington Capitals laid a big ole stinky egg in Game One of their first-round series against the New York Islanders and followed that up by laying just a slightly less stinky egg in Game Two. The Caps were pummeled by the Isles 5-2 and are now in a 2-0 series deficit.

The Caps were out-shot by the Isles 32 to 25 and out-attempted at five-on-five 45 to 43.

  • If Game One was a rotten egg, Game Two was just that same rotten egg but its shell was painted all pretty for Easter. The Caps were out-high danger chanced at five-on-five through two periods 13 to 3. Do you see that giant blue vortex of doom that is literally in the Capitals crease on the heat map? That’s what that is. The Caps dove straight into it like they were Ant-Man heading into the Quantum Realm, but I don’t see any signs that the Caps will be able to escape like Scott Lang did.
  • I’ve already seen some talk about how the Caps went down two games to Columbus in 2018. Instead of it feeling at all hopeful to me, it’s feeling more like Uncle Rico bringing up his past high school football days. The team isn’t the same, the coaching staff isn’t the same, and they aren’t just getting unlucky. To keep it, even more, Napoleon Dynamite centric, we are Napoleon wanting the Caps to not suck and the Caps are Tina refusing to eat the food.
  • Emily Kaplan and Greg Wyshynski have a podcast called ‘ESPN On Ice’ and in their episode previewing all of the first-round series, Kaplan mentions something interesting in terms of the Caps current head coach. She says as the pair begin to evaluate the Caps and Islanders matchup, that she has “Kinda heard whispers of this team maybe not loving Todd Reirden, maybe getting a little sick of his message”. Keep that in mind for the future because it sure feels like the Caps are currently being out-coached.
  • Alex Ovechkin is still the best and deserves better. He now has eight career multi-goal games in the playoffs and with his 66th and 67th career playoff goals, moved past Denis Savard and Joe Nieuwendyk for the 20th most playoff goals in NHL history..

  • In predictable fashion, the two guys we slated very hard for being very bad in Game One were probably the Caps best skaters in Game Two in terms of keeping the puck in the right end and creating offense. Michal Kempny and Evgeny Kuznetsov both tilted the five-on-five ice when they were out there and the first line overall was easily the Caps best. This sort of inconsistency by key players all season is an incredibly confusing conundrum and one that I hope is solved in the offseason.
  • Lars Eller came back from quarantine to center the second line and boy oh boy was that line a disaster at even strength. Eller and Jakub Vrana were both on for four goals against and the line overall (TJ Oshie being the third forward) conceded nine high danger chances to the Isles and created none of their own. Vrana earned his benching in this one, no complaints from me there.
  • Braden Holtby wasn’t good per se, but he also likely would have needed literal physics breaking superpowers to have saved this game for the Caps. 27 saves on 31 shots is probably a good result for what he had to deal with once again in front of him.
  • We’ve come to the final bullet and to the end of yet another highly negative morning numbers post. I would absolutely love for a motivated Caps bunch to turn this ship around as these are somewhat depressing to write. Over 85-percent of teams that take 2-0 series leads in a best-of-seven go on to win the series. Time to get moving or get out.

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

Full RMNB Coverage of Caps vs Islanders

Screenshot: Zoom

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