The Washington Capitals could not avenge their Thursday night loss to the New Jersey Devils, dropping another to their Metropolitan Division rivals on Saturday. They have fallen to 10-8-0 this season, putting them 10th in the Eastern Conference.
Let’s hope those two games were a bit of a reality check.
- The five-on-five metrics look sparkling for the Capitals in this game, with heavy advantages in shot attempts (63-39), shots on goal (39-24), scoring chances (37-17), high-danger chances (15-6), and expected goals (3.81-2.05), but they still went even with the Devils where it counts: 3-3 on the scoreboard. In my estimation, three major things are negatively impacting the Caps early this season: poor goaltending, a chaotic, poorly functioning man-to-man defensive zone system, and, yet again, shoddy special teams.
- Charlie Lindgren was given an opportunity to start despite Logan Thompson having a full day of rest between games, and he proved he probably shouldn’t have. Lindgren allowed six goals on 32 shots against, giving up 2.04 more goals than expected, per MoneyPuck. As you can see in the visual above from Hockey Stat Cards, he may have been even worse than that (at least analytically). Now, were there some incredibly unlucky bounces and some very rough defense in front of him? Yes, but that only compounded the fact that he wasn’t good enough. The Capitals should win this game 9 out of 10 times.
- Now, Lindgren isn’t alone in his struggles, as Thompson hasn’t been much better, especially recently. At five-on-five this season, the Capitals have the fifth-worst save percentage (88.8 percent) in the NHL, besting only the Pittsburgh Penguins (88.5 percent), Anaheim Ducks (88.5 percent), Vancouver Canucks (88 percent), and Chicago Blackhawks (88 percent). Not exactly a group of Stanley Cup hopefuls. For comparison’s sake, the Capitals had the sixth-best five-on-five save percentage last year (91.6 percent).
- The power play and penalty kill still suck, point blank and the period. The power play scored a weird bad-angle goal via Ilya Protas, but that seems to be the only way they have scored while up a man this year so far: either weird scrambles at the end of power plays or with high-skilled individual brilliance. Neither of those things is sustainable. The Capitals rank 22nd in power play effectiveness (20 percent). I like some of what Ray Bennett has brought in terms of new zone-entry methodology, but outside of that, I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be seeing that is different from Kirk Muller’s inept units. The penalty kill, run by Scott Allen, isn’t faring much better, ranking 20th in the league (75.4 percent), and they gave up two tallies to New Jersey.
- I don’t want to do this, trust me, but we need to talk about Alex Ovechkin. He played a game-low 7:13 of five-on-five ice time, and in his 3:43 of power-play ice time, he was incredibly tough to watch. He still has just one goal and five points this season. I am so not envious of Spencer Carbery right now. I don’t know what the answer is.
- I do know one answer is to keep playing Cole Hutson as much as he is playing recently. He picked up three assists in the loss and has to be currently leading the pack in this year’s race to win the Calder Trophy as the NHL’s Rookie of the Year. Hutson now leads all rookies in scoring with 15 points (5g, 10a) in 18 games and became the first Capitals rookie defenseman to register a three-assist game since Mikhail Tatarinov on December 7, 1990. He is also the first rookie defenseman in general to record a three-assist game since his brother Lane tallied three assists for the Montreal Canadiens on April 1, 2025.
Numbers thanks to Hockey-Reference, NaturalStatTrick, and HockeyStatCards.
