The Washington Capitals kicked off their season-long road trip with a heavy loss to a New Jersey Devils team that is likely the NHL’s top squad this year. The 5-1 loss kept the Caps from putting together a three-win streak for the first time this season.
It was a game of opposites.
- The Caps and Devils in recent seasons have played almost the exact same game every time they have matched up with one another. New Jersey’s speed normally causes Washington fits and they dominate five-on-five possession and chances. However, the Caps would still regularly come out the victor due to the gulf in offensive talent and/or goaltending. That script got flipped on Saturday. The Caps out-attempted the Devils at five-on-five 60 to 33 and similarly out-chanced them 34 to 19. Yet, got blown out. A taste of their own medicine and a sign of two teams headed in opposite directions.
- Vitek Vanecek was very, very good, but this is your reminder that the team in front of him has been historically good this season. This game, believe it or not, was more of an anomaly for Vitek in terms of how good he was. Typically, this season he has been neither a net positive nor a net negative for the Devils. Before Saturday he had stopped just 0.1 goals above expected according to MoneyPuck which was ranked around 22nd among all starters. New Jersey is just good enough to hide his bad games unlike the Caps of the past couple of seasons.
- The actual full-on Caps blunder currently residing on the Devils is Jonas Siegenthaler who was dealt so the Caps could play half-a-century-old Zdeno Chara for one season. Siegs did take two penalties in this game but also added an assist and is arguably the best even-strength defenseman in the entire league this season. Take a look at the date stamp on this incredibly painful-to-read thread I tweeted about him in the past.
The Caps absolutely dominate all aspects of five-on-five play with Jonas Siegenthaler on the ice this season. So that's cool and something I don't really notice because I don't think he does it in the traditional Miro Heiskanen/Roman Josi/Cale Makar/etc. way.
— Chris Cerullo (@CJC_95) November 30, 2019
- With defenseman Erik Gustafsson on the ice at five-on-five, the Caps out-attempted New Jersey 31 to 16, out-scoring chanced them 19 to 10, and out-high danger chanced them 5 to 3. The only issue is they were out-scored by the Devils 3 to 0 in those same minutes. All three of those goals came from Jack Hughes who Gustafsson spent the most five-on-five time on ice against of any opposition center (7:27). When the two shared the ice, the Caps were out-attempted 11 to 7, out-scoring chanced 7 to 2, and out-high danger chanced 3 to 0.
- So, that begs the question…why on earth was that matchup allowed to happen? Gustafsson, who bizarrely played the most of any Caps player at five-on-five in the game (18:00), is well known to be incredibly weak defensively. Still, as you can see in the above bullet, he was owning the Devils in every shift not against Hughes’s line. More should have been done to keep that Gustafsson-Carlson pairing away from the literal best offensive player on the other team. That matchup decided the game.
- One positive that I will draw from the loss is that the newly formed second line of Sonny Milano, Evgeny Kuznetsov, and TJ Oshie seems to be building some excellent, quick chemistry. If Peter Laviolette can resist changing his forward lines every three seconds the Caps could be in for some serious scoring from that trio in the near future. Though, it must be noted that they were incredibly sheltered in this game, starting a total of zero shifts in the defensive zone.
Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com and NaturalStatTrick.com.
