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Ghastly goaltending: numbers for the morning after

By Chris Cerullo

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February 8, 2021 7:05 am

The Washington Capitals came into Sunday afternoon’s action looking to halt their first losing streak of the season at just two games. Unfortunately, they weren’t successful in that plight and dropped a 7-4 decision to the Philadelphia Flyers.

The Caps outshot the Flyers 37 to 23 and out-attempted them at five-on-five 55 to 50.

  • This is the first Capitals loss this season that I’m sorta okay with as it came almost purely on the back of goaltending just absolutely disappearing. At the same time, however, it was another loss that came in a familiar yet infuriating way as the Caps blew another multi-goal lead. I think there are some serious issues with the defensive scheme of this team but I actually thought outside of a back and forth first period (in terms of chances) the Caps battened down the hatches pretty well. They just couldn’t buy a save, getting scored on six times via only 22 Flyers shots. That’s a combined .730-save percentage for Vitek Vanecek and Craig Anderson. Woof.
  • Alex Ovechkin is clearly still one of the best players in the league. A four-point afternoon for Alex gives him 12 points in eight games which is good for seventh in the league in points per game among players that have played five games. Ovi is now only six goals away from tying Phil Esposito for sixth all-time in NHL goal-scoring.
  • Really the entire first line deserves their own bullet as those three dominated this entire game. Nicklas Backstrom had three points to give him 17 total in 12 games which is fifth in the whole league. Tom Wilson also grabbed three points giving him 12 points in ten games which sees him tied with a large group of players for the tenth most in the league. With the trio on the ice at five-on-five, the Caps got 63.2-percent of the shot attempts, 52.9-percent of the scoring chances, and 66.7-percent of the high danger chances.

  • The other Caps forward line that I thought was noticeably active offensively was their fourth. With Daniel Sprong on the ice at five-on-five, the Caps didn’t give up a single scoring chance and created six of their own. Sprong may not light the scoreboard up but it’s tough to pick out a game where you could say he was individually “bad”.
  • I felt like this was the first game where you could really see the Caps lack of depth due to COIVD and injuries really hurt them. It’s also not allowing them to form any sort of chemistry as it seems like they trot out a new team every single game.
  • One last positive from this game is that I think the Flyers absolutely stunk and I’m sure I’ll get flamed by someone for saying that as they scored seven goals, but their underlying numbers this season are not good (same goes for the Caps though). They’re riding what the Caps were riding previously which is unsustainable shooting percentages and some clutch goaltending. Their PDO (sum of a team’s 5v5 shooting percentage and their 5v5 save percentage) sits at 106 this season which is top of the league. They sure look beatable and they were a team I had previously penciled in as the eventual division winner.

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

RMNB Coverage of Caps vs Flyers

Screenshot courtesy of NBC

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