Hey, it’s Loffs Watch! Let’s check in on Washington’s playoff chances.
Despite taking just one point from Saturday’s game against Boston, the Capitals’ status improved this weekend significantly. Some of that is owed to Detroit’s shootout loss to Florida, and a lot is owed to Philadelphia’s blowout loss to Chicago.
Thus, these are the standings.
For the first time in three months, the Capitals own the third spot in the Metropolitan Division. They’ve got the same number of points as the Philadelphia Flyers, fourth in the Metro and now in the second wild card, but with two fewer game played. (I don’t like calling in “games in hand.” I don’t like a bunch of the phrases we use in sports. This used to be a cute character trait for me; now I’m just a crank.)
Behind the Wings are the Islanders, whose longshot keeps getting longer following a 4-1 loss to the Bolts yesterday. Their fortunes have crashed lately. (The sum of their five-on-five shooting percentage and five-on-five save percentage is in the league’s bottom five over the last ten games.)
Speaking of fortunes, here are Washington’s playoff chances according to various predictive models:
| Source | % |
|---|---|
| HockeyViz | 77 |
| Moneypuck | 74 |
| The Athletic | 70 |
That’s a jump of about 10 percentage points since our last check-in. In addition to racking up points, there’s another reason in particular why the dweebs think DC’s chances keep getting better: strength of schedule. That’s another sports term I don’t love; it’s more like difficulty of schedule, based on average standing of opponents, but that’s not as snappy. The Capitals have just climbed over a jagged hump of difficult opponents – the average standings points (and therefore by proxy difficulty) of their last eight games was 102, whereas the remainder is just 92. The worst part of the schedule is past.
According to Tankathon, the Red Wings have a similarly challenging remaining SOS, but the Flyers have it pretty easy with opponents averaging 86 standings points. We’re going to be keeping tabs of every Flyers game from here on out, starting with them hosting the Islanders on Monday.
Loffs Watch Theme Song of the Day
See you next time on Loffs Watch.
