The Washington Capitals gave us a compelling win over the Pittsburgh Penguins on Friday night. Now, with key players starting to return from injury, they have the opportunity to actually be, ya know, good. Sunday’s date with the Edmonton Oilers, themselves a talented but underperforming team, is a good chance to start one of those things where you win multiple consecutive games, I forget what those are called, it’s been so long.
The game is at 7 PM, it airs on the National Broadcasting Company Sports Washington channel, and I have the honor of providing your recap.
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|---|---|---|
| Record | 6-9-1 | 9-7-1 |
| Shot Attempt % | 52.9% | 48.3% |
| PDO | 93.7 | 102.1 |
| Power Play | 14.9% | 19.6% |
| Penalty Kill | 69.8% | 78.6% |
Projected Lines
By way of the esteemed Ms. Khurshydyan of the Washington Post, we’ve got some changes in the lines.
Stephenson – Backstrom – Oshie
Ovechkin – Kuznetsov – DSP
Vrana – Eller – Wilson
Connolly – Beagle – Chiasson
Djoos – Carlson
Orpik – Bowey
Orlov – Chorney
Holtby
Connor and Nicky
Connor McDavid and Nicklas Backstrom are both excellent players, though I imagine only the first one will get the “generational” adjective put on him regularly.
When McDavid hits the ice, he increases his team’s shot-attempt rate by 10 attempts per hour. He’s an electric forward. Backstrom’s role is a little different – he slows the opponent’s shot-attempt rate by 14 attempts per hour. I’m confident that Barry Trotz will use Backstrom against McDavid tonight. Let’s see how it turns out.
Storylines
- Like it says above, Brett Connolly will return tonight. Matt Niskanen is practicing with the team, but is still wearing a no-contact jersey.
- With the Caps on the mend, Liam O’Brien has been returned to Hershey.
- Jimmy Vesey got banged up, y’all.
- Ryan Reaves and Tom Wilson spent the other night acting like tough guys and following it up not at all.
- Nick Backstrom has been playing excellently all over the ice lately, but he had been held pointless for a long while until the Penguins game.
- John Carlson is repping a lot of the Caps’ offense right now. Is that good or bad?
- Braden Holtby has won his 200th game. He was low key as hell about it.
- The Caps’ stadium series logo: when nothing but the bare minimum will do.
- The Caps puppy beat pounds on with goalie Philipp Grubauer taking care of a good good boy named Leo.
- Hey, it turns out that the whole Putin Team thing is a Kremlin-organized astroturf campaign. Didn’t see that coming!
- So now we know Vadim Shipachyov’s side of the story with George McPhee and Vegas. Yikes.
The Caps Are Already (Relatively) Healthy
Whenever I whine about the Capitals, which I guess I do a lot (I’m sorry), some folks tell me I’m not considering the Caps’ injuries heavily enough. The above graph, from NHL Injury Viz, offers some important context: The Caps aren’t special. Based on the cap hit of injured players, the Caps are middle of the pack, miles from the hockey Antietam that is the Ducks right now. Matt Niskanen plays a massive role on the defense, and it’ll be tremendous when he returns (it’ll do wonders for Brooks Orpik to return to a lower role, and it could help the team immeasurably later on if John Carlson stops playing a half an hour every night). But the Caps aren’t special in this respect. Injuries are an inevitability for every team in this sport, and it’s just an accident of history that the Caps had been relatively unscathed over the last two seasons.
Full Coverage of Caps vs Oilers
Headline image: Patrick Smith
