Capitals forget how to play hockey again against the Islanders: numbers for the morning after

April 29, 2022 8:20 am

The Washington Capitals took their second consecutive ugly loss to the New York Islanders and now will need help from the Columbus Blue Jackets if they want to avoid the Florida Panthers in the first round of the playoffs.

One of the worst games of the season?

The five-on-five stats from this game really don’t show how bad of an effort it really was so I’m kinda just going to throw them out from a wide, overall, team-based view. I don’t think I remember a single stretch where the Caps put together two good shifts in a row. They were disjointed, disorganized, and honestly looked disinterested. Blech.
Vitek Vanecek would have never been the difference in this game but I thought he was mediocre yet again. Five goals allowed on just 26 shots against. I think he should have two of the goals against for sure as they were body blows. The guy across the ice from him should probably have been in a Caps sweater for this game if the Isles front office had allowed that over a month ago and the Caps bit.
The following from Tarik really shows off just how horrendous the special teams units were in these two games. He tweeted this early in the game before the Isles would actually add on a third power-play goal. Just otherworldly awful.

In the last four periods – all vs. NYI – the #Caps have surrendered four PPGs and a shorty.

— Tarik El-Bashir (@Tarik_ElBashir) April 28, 2022

Axel Jonsson-Fjallby ruined Semyon Varlamov’s shutout bid with his second career NHL goal that came in the final minute of regulation. Some McNugget magic if you will. He needs to shoot more next year.
I thought Nicklas Backstrom was a bit of a disaster in this game. If it were up to me he’d get the night off against the Rangers in favor of Connor McMichael. In my opinion, the entire top six was put together rather poorly. Anthony Mantha is completely wasted on a third line that includes just Lars Eller and AJF. That just cant happen. Why is he not skating with Evgeny Kuznetsov?
Ian outlined what needs to happen result and points wise later tonight in regards to the playoff implications.