The Washington Capitals are on quite the roll. With their 4-3 win over the Columbus Blue Jackets on Saturday night, the Capitals won their fourth game in a row and their eighth in their last ten games (8-1-1).
Things feel great. Now, what do the numbers behind that recent play say though? They say it’s time to pump the brakes a little bit. Let me explain.
- I’ll start with this individual game first. The Capitals battled their way through some rough spells where a better team than the Blue Jackets would have likely found a way to pull ahead more than the one goal that Columbus did in the second period. The Capitals were out-scoring chanced in every period at five-on-five and ended the game with a minus-10 deficit there. Yes, there’s some score effects stuff at play there but there are clear warning signs about unsustainable success if things keep trending in the current direction.
- But, Chris, the current direction is a team that is 8-1-1 over it’s last 10 games. Why are you being negative for no reason? Well, if you listen to head coach Spencer Carbery on a daily basis, you’d know that he has been acknowledging that his team is defending far, far, far too much during this stretch despite the wins. Seriously, go listen to his postgame presser from last night. That’s incredibly encouraging for me to hear because it’s clear that the rookie bench boss sees what I see. He’s obviously thankful and proud of the wins but recognizes that things could be and should be a lot better. Over their last 10 games at five-on-five, the Capitals have seen just 47.8 percent of the shot attempts, 44.8 percent of the expected goals, 44 percent of the scoring chances, and 43.9 percent of the high-danger chances.
- So, why are they still winning those games then despite those atrocious numbers? Partially because lady luck has decided to come back to the team after she went missing for seemingly all of October. The Capitals rank third in the league over their last 10 games in PDO (103.6) which you get when you add a team’s shooting percentage to their saving percentage. A lot of that is being driven by goaltending, particularly from Charlie Lindgren, as the Capitals rank first in the league (93.2 percent) in the same context in saving percentage by just over .2 percentage points. That’s a lot when you’re talking over 93 percent of shots being stopped at all strengths.
The Capitals have killed off 23 straight opposing power-play opportunities over their last ten games. Washington’s 100.0 penalty-kill percentage since Oct. 25 ranks first in the NHL.
— CapitalsPR (@CapitalsPR) November 19, 2023
- Lindgren was good again on Saturday night and his game would have looked even better if the NHL had any clue what they were doing with goaltender interference. Instead of the 1.18 goals saved above expected he should have ended the game with, he came up with just .18 which is still overall a positive effort. Lindgren is now 4-0 with a 1.51 goals-against average, a .955 save percentage, and one shutout over his last four starts.
- Shoutout to Hendrix Lapierre who hopefully just had his breakout NHL game. The 21-year-old center recorded his first career multi-point outing with three points (1g, 2a) and the line that he centered ended up with eight total points (3g, 5a). Lapierre’s goal was especially impressive as he rifled a slick backhand past Elvis Merzlikins in an actual “a la Sidney Crosby” type play.
- Joel Edmundson had a pretty successful Capitals debut. He skated 21:42 of ice time in the victory and with him on the ice at five-on-five, the Capitals saw a plus-3 differential in high-danger chances. That’s quite literally his number one job in a perfect world, slowing down play and limiting quality chances against.
Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com and NaturalStatTrick.com.
