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AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar The Washington Capitals have defied expectations this season. After two hugely disappointing seasons the 2017 summer saw a lot of roster turnover and a lot of key players leaving D.C. Any time someone mentions the 2017/18 Capitals season they mention they players they lost so I’ll spare you the names since you most likely know them already.
Even with the Caps sitting atop possibly the toughest division in hockey for most of the season there is still some questions about how good this team is. Can this team who usually under performs in the playoffs finally make a run, or at least get past the second round. It’s almost impossible to determine who will go far in the postseason or who will win the Stanley Cup by looking at stats. I always tend to look at defensive stats. Poor defensive teams in the regular season tend to not go very far in the playoffs. Even one of the most simple stats, Goals Against Per Game has told us a lot in past years. If you rank high in that stat you’re more likely to get farther in the spring. I’ve stated my affection for that stat in many previous articles so you won’t have to do much digging here to find me mentioning it’s importance. To see if the 17/18 Capitals are truly contenders or not I won’t be strictly relying on this stat, even though it’s not good either. Sixty-one games into the season Washington ranks 19th in goals against average at 2.98. That’s not even close to good enough to consider them a true threat. Lets go a little deeper. We’ll start with the most basic advanced stat there is in hockey today, Corsi%. Teams towards the top in this stat tend to perform better than teams that rank low. The Capitals right now rank……low. With just about twenty games left in the season the Caps rank 23rd in the league with a 47.85 rating. More often than not, this team is getting out attempted and their opponent has the puck more often. But an attempt is just that, it could mean anything. Just because you’re letting up a shot attempt doesn’t mean it’s that dangerous. The Caps could be a great defensive team still. If they keep team to the outside and away from good scoring areas attempts don’t really mean that much. The numbers aren’t very encouraging here either. Washington ranks dead last in High Danger Corsi For%. Their percentage right now is at a pathetic 43.22%. I know people know what dead last means but to put it into more perspective they are below teams like Buffalo, Arizona, Vancouver and Ottawa. Bad teams and teams that have been out of the playoff picture for a long time. Buffalo by the way who ranks 30th is ahead of the Capitals by a pretty big margin, they’re HDCF% is 45.41%. The Capitals are one of only three teams in the entire NHL to allow more than 600 High Danger Attempts against being joined by only the teams from New York, the Rangers (601) and the Islanders (666). The Caps have allowed 624 high danger attempts against. Those 624 attempts against means they allow 10.4 per game. The Islanders allow 10.91 per game and the lowly Sabres allow just 8.13 per game. Maybe we shouldn’t be comparing the Capitals to these teams. After all the Islanders and Sabres don’t have the same expectations or ambitions as Washington does. Lets compare this Capitals team to the teams they want to be like, Cup champions or conference champions. The Pittsburgh Penguins last season we’re 5th in HDCF% at 53.60 and they allowed just 8.93 high danger attempts per game. The Penguins in 2015/16 were 3rd in HDCF% at 55.13 and allowed even less dangerous attempts per game at 7.41. Lets not stop there. The Chicago Blackhawks who won the Stanley Cup in 2015 were not as great in this stat. BUT, they were still OK. Their HDCF% was only ranked 18th but still was at 50.04, way above the Capitals number so far this season. Chicago also gave up only 8.64 high danger attempts a game. If you want to stay in the eastern conference Tampa Bay was very good in these stats in 14/15, the Lightning were 3rd in HDCF% at 55.36 and gave up 7.06 dangerous chances a game. One more. The Los Angeles Kings, a team that basically won their Cups with great defense were 6th in HDCF% in 2014 at 53.87 and allowed only 6.90 high danger attempts a game. Again, since the Caps are in the east we’ll see how the east’s best team was that year. It was the New York Rangers who won the conference in 2014 and they were 4th in HDCF% at 54.10 and allowed 8.65 high danger attempts a game. That’s all the eastern champions and Stanley Cup winners going back to the last lockout in 2013. All the teams are very good or in the Blackhawks case respectable numbers in the high danger category. The Capitals numbers are just bad. You’re never going to see a number or stat and accurately predict who will have success in the playoffs. Maybe the Capitals can buck the trend when it comes to these numbers and these stats. But if I was a betting man, I’m not putting very much money on the Capitals come playoff time. Stick around here, in a few days or so we’ll see how other teams around the NHL are doing is these same stats this season. By CJ Witt
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