We hear LA is looking for shots. Too bad they didn’t specify which kind!

According to TSN’s Bob McKenzie , Jeff Carter has been traded to the LA Kings for Jack Johnson and a first-round pick. Puzzlingly, stellar backup Jonathan Bernier was not a part of this deal, even though he was reportedly offered, and Columbus’s goalie situation remains in question.

LA will be taking on Carter’s $5,272,727 cap hit approximately until the sun burns out, and will be looking for Carter to jumpstart their struggling offense. CBJ will be getting folk rock singer defenseman Jack Johnson in return at a cap hit of $4,357,143, which presumably is the kind of young D they were looking for to rebuild their blueline for the future.

This trade will also reunite the walking Axe Body Spray commercial that is Jeff Carter and his longtime teammate Mike Richards, which apparently seemed like a good idea to someone today. Look for widespread shortages in Ed Hardy products to sweep through the LA area.

According to TSN’s Bob McKenzie, the Columbus Blue Jackets have traded center Antoine Vermette to the Phoenix Coyotes for goalie Curtis McElhinney, a 2012 second-round and a 2013 fifth-round draft pick.

Vermette has a cap hit of $3,750,000 and had been projected as a possible option for the Caps themselves, likely because he has a pulse and the letter “C” in his player bio, but we’d remind you that there is certainly another center on the Blue Jackets that seems to be very much up for grabs. Vermette will instead now be providing center depth to a team filling holes for the postseason, while Columbus will presumably gain some breathing room in net from the acquisition of McBackup McElhinney.

We don’t want to jump to conclusions, but this may be an indication that the  Blue Jackets aren’t going to try to make a run for the playoffs this year.

Photo credit: Jamie Sabau

Everyone always has such lofty expectations for New Years Eve. It’s supposed to be a climax, the culmination of the year,whatever. But it’s usually such a letdown, like most of tonight’s battle between the Washington Capitals and league-worst Columbus Blue Jackets. The Caps were disinterested and the Jackets were frustrating until the third act, when Washington injected some drama into the proceedings.

Despite a late flurry from Columbus, the Caps ended the first period unscathed. They weren’t so lucky in the second, as John Moore and Sammy Pahlsson both struck for goals. Alex Ovechkin got one back in the third, finishing off a long sequence in the Columbus zone. Alex Semin tied it up with a lovely lob under the bar. Dennis Wideman got the go-ahead just a few seconds later. Ovechkin converted on a power play.

• The game was a mess: tons of whistles, stifling defensive setups, one power play. Your basic midseason doldrums.
• But the third period had four goals in it– all of them Washington’s. Weeee.
• Blue Jacket Derek Dorsett is a pest. He got Alex Ovechkin to serve time, which is not remotely a fair trade.
• Those first three Caps goals all came within 3 minutes, 2 within 30 seconds. Dennis Wideman was involved in all three. Wides had 3 points in the last 7 games before tonight. Two points just this evening.
• Mike Knuble was ostensibly a third liner tonight, but he got 4th line time: 12:11 TOI.
• Alex Ovechkin (16 G) is gonna be your Capitals goal leader from here on out. We’re calling it. He’s finally got escape velocity, and now we get to watch him soar.

Joe B suit of the night

That was 40 awful minutes of hockey followed by 20 terrific minutes. It was a rough start, enough to send many viewers reeling to the punch bowl. For those masochists who persevered, we were treated to the theatrical flair that this team seems to summon from time to time.

And there’s something to be said for timeliness. The Caps show up only when the story requires it. That’s infuriating but entertaining.

Hey, here comes 2012. Make it the best year of your life. If you’re lucky enough to share tonight with loved ones, take a moment to appreciate it. If you’re alone tonight, we sympathize; begin plotting your revenge.

(Photo credit: Luis M. Alvarez)

Risking dropping their second straight game to a sub-par team, the Washington Capitals were rescued by none other than Jason Chimera, a healthy scratch just a game ago.

For Chimera it was sweet redemption and “especially nice” that it came against his former team, the Columbus Blue Jackets.

Despite the win, victory wasn’t easy for Washington with sloppy play plaguing the Caps throughout the night.

“We did not do a very good job tonight,” veteran center Jason Arnott said. “There were a lot of bouncing pucks, a lot of nonchalant plays that we don’t normally make … We have to clean up our own zone, it starts tomorrow with the video, and try to correct it and come up with a better effort to back our goaltender up.”

Head Coach Bruce Boudreau seemed to agree Arnott’s view that the Capitals must play better in front of young netminder Michal Neuvirth.

“The goals that went in he wasn’t going to stop,” Boudreau said. “When the game is on the line he is there. Doesn’t matter if you have five by him or one by him. He’s really good when the game is on the line, and he had to make some real good saves at the end to preserve it. To me, that is the sign of a real winner.”

The Capitals opened the scoring just 1:39 into the match when John Carlson tipped home the rebound off Chimera’s knuckling shot, which deflected off the catching glove of Jackets goalie Steve Mason. The puck ricocheted off numerous players, including Brooks Laich before Carlson got the lucky bounce. With three minutes remaining in the frame, John Erskine and Jared Boll dropped the gloves. Neither combatant landed many punches, but Boll appeared to get the better of the Lumberjack before the two went down. The Caps dominated in the first period, outshooting the Columbus, 16-4.

Midway through the second stanza, the crazy started happenin’. After a scramble in front of the net, Antoine Vermette popped one past Neuvirth. Just over a minute and a half later, however, Mike Knuble put Washington back on top when he Knuble’d the biscuit into the back of the net after a Nicklas Backstrom shot got past Mason. However, (are you noticing a pattern here) just 42 seconds later Columbus would knot it up once again when Fedor Tyutin fooled Neuvirth with a wrister. Not to be outdone for the second time in as many minutes, Arnott made the score three-two Washington after a great feed for Marco Sturm. Four goals. Two minutes and 17 seconds. Got all that? Didn’t think so.

The Capitals would hold that lead for 14 minutes and 23 seconds into the third, until Scottie Upshall held off both Karl Alzner and Sturm as they tried to remove him from the puck before rifling a wrist shot past Neuvirth. Tie game.

In overtime, well, you know the drill. Chimera chips it in and there’s your ballgame. Caps down Jackets, 4-3 (OT)

• With tonight’s two point performance, the Capitals went over the century mark for the third straight year. With four games left to play, the Capitals have 101 standings points, sitting only one point behind conference-leading Philadelphia. A month ago, if you told us that the Capitals would be challenging for first place with their top defensemen, franchise center, two-time league MVP and both of their star goaltenders struggling with injuries we would have called you crazy. But Washington has weathered the storm. In fact, the Caps have actually found their groove during that time, going 12-2-1 in the month of March, notching an impressive 25 out of a possible 30 standings points. That’s called, you guessed it, staying angry.
• The Capitals dodged a huge bullet before the game when it was announced that Rick Nash would sit due to an undisclosed injury. In eight career games against the Capitals, the Columbus captain has notched seven goals and four assists.
• TSN’s Bob McKenzie reported during the second intermission of the game that Dennis Wideman is in a Washington hospital with a significant leg hematoma as a result of a hit Tuesday by Carolina’s Tuomo Ruutu. After the game, Knuble confirmed the news, saying Wideman has sent pictures, with his leg looking like it’s out of a movie. ”It’s pretty grotesque how Dennis is opened up right now,” Knuble said. “I think he’s pretty much high all the time to deal with the pain.”
• News that Mike Green may participate in his first full Caps practice since suffering a second concussion February 25 blunts the news somewhat. That is, as long a you don’t do a Google image search about Wideman. Really, don’t do it. Don’t.
• How long will Wideman be out? Who knows? But CSN’s Jill Sorenson spoke with Matt Hendricks following the game, with Hendricks saying he suffered a hematoma during the NHL lockout and missed a total of two months.
• The entire Capitals defense was forced to shoulder an even heavier load than normal tonight with only five healthy defensemen available for the final two periods of the game after John Erskine suffered an injury. There were three particularly noteworthy performances. First, John Carlson. In Captain America’s 100th career game, he scored the game’s first goal, notched an assist and had four shots in 25:48 of ice time. Scott Hannan was also exceptional, logging a game-high 28:19, blocking six shots and dishing out three hits. Finally, Jeff Schultz stepped his game up, blocking three shots and being a plus-two in 26:35 of ice time.
• Despite playing just under six minutes, Erskine still managed to register a team-high four hits with his physical play, though one has to think that could be a possible cause for his ailment. Or maybe he suffered it during this completely unnecessary fight with Jared Boll. Most likely, we’ll never know.

• On the opposite end of the spectrum, Tyler Sloan was a minus-one in only 12:55 of time on ice. So essentially there were only four NHL quality defensemen out there.
• Per 106.7 The Fan’s Sky Kerstein, the Capitals have now won six of their last seven shootout or overtime games after losing eight in a row in that fashion earlier in the season.
• The net: crashed
  

  Per NHL.com’s play-by-play, the four goals were from 14, 12, 11 and 14 feet (from the end boards). In other words, net crashed.less than a minute ago via webJapersRink
  JapersRink

Joe B. Suit of the Night

Despite the win, the Jackets rallied three times while down by a goal against the Caps. To succeed in the playoffs you need a killer instinct, something Washington lacked against Columbus.

Four games. That’s all that remains until the Stanley Cup Playoffs. We’ll see you back here Saturday night, though it is Nicklas Backstrom bobblehead day, so we won’t blame you for heading to the game.

Additional reporting by Ian Oland and Neil Greenberg.

We’ve dwindled down to the final five games of the season, but despite the doldrums, the Capitals showed up to play tonight. Even if most of the viewing audience was busied with the NCAA basketball tournament, this rare meeting of the Washington Capitals and the Columbus Blue Jackets was solid hockey. Columbus came out extremely hard, seemingly ignorant of the fact that the team was gutted at the trade deadline, their head coach has been fired, key players are hurt and the team is 12 points out of the 8th and final playoff spot.

The “Blazers” as Joe Beninatii constantly referred to them as, had odd man rushes all night long, but failed to convert almost every time because of solid goaltending from Jose Theodore or generally poor execution. Columbus’ wealth of penalties seemed to doom any chance for them to reach a crucial early lead. And despite the Capitals giving up a third period tally – which forced Bruce Boudreau to call a timeout and have an expletive-filled dress down of the team – the Blue Jackets could not force Overtime. Thus leading to the Capitals making history.

Tonight we’re going to call the bullets “Easter Eggs.” We don’t want to scare the children:

• 

  Burnt into our eyelids

  The first five minutes of the game’s broadcast on CSN were plagued by technical problems. Instead of glorious HD, we stared at this entrancing image (at right) while a lofi audio played for us.
• Even though we missed a quarter of it, that first period was a blockbuster. Through three goals (Semin, Fleischmann, Green), the Washington Capitals resuscitated the explosive starts that made them so dangerous earlier this season. Also it does wonders for the RMNB staff’s collective blood pressure.
• Jose Theodore is a superb goalie. It’s time for us to dismiss any discussion of “making a case” for the starting spot in the playoffs. Jose Theodore led the Caps to their epic streak, and played up to the competition in big games against Detroit, Pittsburgh and others. One-upping Semyon Varlamov’s excellent performance the other night, Jose recorded 34 saves on the evening and never looked overwhelmed.
• Alexander Ovechkin, where are you? 0 shots on goal through the first two periods, and hardly a presence on offense. The funk is now a problem, and it has to end. Like now. Since the Russian Machine’s last multi-goal game March 8th against Dallas he has exactly two goals. 8 Capital players since have the same number or more. Один в поле не воин!
• Returning Tomas Fleischmann to 2nd-line center may have been a necessity given B-Mo’s injury, but it worked out pretty well tonight. Flash won all of his faceoffs through the first 20 minutes, and 83% through the second. Add to that his powerplay goal and you’ve got a slump-ending performance from number 14. The key for Fleischmann is continuing to improve on his draws and be at least passable in the dot. If he can, we predict Bruce Boudreau will leave him at center and the Capitals will have two powerful lines heading into the playoffs.
• Mike Green‘s 5 on 3 powerplay slapshot was aided by a great screen from Brooks Laich and earned MG52 his 19th goal of the season.  Two periods later, Green almost made that an even twenty during a wild scrum with C-bus goalie Steve Mason. But what got Greener this bullet tonight was his superlative defense. Bruce Boudreau raved about his prized pupil after the game saying that “Everytime he was on, he was a force defensively.” We honestly think there’s been no defenseman more deserving of the Norris Trophy this year or last. Unfortunately there’s no chance he’ll ever win until the people up north see him more than a glorified 4th forward.
• Is it just me, or did Jason Chimera play with extra heat tonight? I dig it. And yes, he did get screwed out of a 1st-period goal.
• There’s no other way to say this: Rick Nash owns the Caps shorthanded.
• And while we’re talking about Columbus, they sure have some weird fans. If you were like us, you were totally locked in on that guy sitting directly behind the Columbus bench wearing a Pixies T-Shirt. Kind of an odd wardrobe decision for a Saturday Night Hockey Game, eh? However, the reason why he got a mention tonight was because for a dude that likes great music and probably owns the best seats in the house, he could not have looked more prissy being there.
• Finally, not only did the Capitals set a franchise record with their 51st win on the season, the Hershey Bears set an AHL Record with their 58th victory tonight against the Syracuse Cruch. Hell, the South Carolina Stingrays even won too. We advise our readers to enjoy it while it lasts and not expect such organizational dominance in the future as the Hershey Bears probably have 10 NHL caliber players with guys like Karl Alzner, Andrew Gordon, Bryan Helmer, Steve Pinizzotto, Sean Collins, Mathieu Perreault, Braden Holtby and Michal Neuvirth filling out the roster. Players like this will eventually be promoted, plucked away or traded, but it sure has been an incredible run hasn’t it?

With back-to-back games coming against the Boston Bruins and Pittsburgh Penguins Monday and Tuesday Night, we’ll be interested to see how Bruce Boudreau handles the minutes of some of his top players and who he actually gives a jersey to. Lately he’s been consistently rolling lines and focusing on keeping guys fresh while still being just aggressive enough to win games. We couldn’t be more supportive of this game-plan right now, especially with the President’s Trophy all but won. Plus, anytime we see Mike Green logging well under 30 minutes played, and the Capitals are still winning, we’re extremely pleased.

Anyways, to all of our readers, we wanted to extend to you well wishes and a Happy Easter tomorrow. To the team we’d like to say, we hope you enjoy your day off. Because once you wake up Monday, it’s gonna be 4 games in 7 nights and then the playoffs start. Oh boy!

Chris Clark and Milan Jurcina in a Blue Jackets Uniform. Weird.

The Washington Capitals made a trade this week, picking up Jason Chimera from the Columbus Blue Jackets for Chris Clark and Milan Jurcina. Given that I spent all weekend putting together a spreadsheet trying to approximate the Goals Versus Threshold that Puck Prospectus uses to give an idea of a player’s contributions, I thought it would be a good time to put it to use. I wasn’t able to match their GVT exactly, but I got close enough to make the thing potentially viable.

First, on what GVT is:

“To explain in terms already familiar to sports statisticians, GVT is very similar to VORP in baseball: it is the value of a player, in goals, above what a replacement player would have contributed. The fact that GVT is measured in goals is crucial: statistics that divide up “Win Shares”, so that the ratings of a team’s players sum to that team’s number of wins, are very erratic and non-linear, since wins don’t increase or decrease linearly with team caliber. While hockey is ultimately about winning or losing, players’ contributions always come down to scoring goals and preventing them. A player cannot “win” a game, even though he may be put in a situation where scoring a goal or making a key save would create or conserve a win. Each player’s role, no matter his position, is to try and increase the goal differential in favor of his team. An offensive player who scores a hat trick only to see his teammates allow 4 goals against has nevertheless done his job; a goaltender who stops 39 of 40 shots only to lose 1-0 has likewise performed well. Using this standard, all players can be compared by the same yardstick: how much did they help (or harm) their team’s goal differential?…

• GVT is measured in goals. This makes it a convenient unit that hockey fans are already comfortable with.
• GVT compares hockey players of all positions and over any period of time.
• GVT only uses statistics that lead directly to goals. You cannot incorporate goaltender wins into GVT, because they are not a measurement of goals prevented. However, if you can rationally explain what are the odds of a faceoff win (or loss) leading to a goal or goal against, it would be possible to incorporate faceoff wins and losses into GVT, though I have not done so.
• GVT has built-in accounting. The sum of player GVTs on a team equals that team’s GVT plus the replacement level. This is essential, as player statistics often come with caveats. “Kovalchuk scored 43 goals, but he doesn’t play defense and his team isn’t good”. This makes it much easier to measure “how good would this team be replacing player A with player B?” It is also essential in that player success is correlated with team success, which after all is the entire point of the sport.
• GVT automatically normalizes for the strength of the league…

GVT does not measure a player’s talent. The statistic measures a player’s contribution to his team’s goal differential. A goaltender that faces zero shots will have a value of zero, regardless of whether he is Patrick Roy or Andrew Raycroft. Likewise, a player that is injured or gets little ice time will see his GVT reduced accordingly. It also does not take into account environment: a player will score more with better linemates, and I make no attempt to adjust for that…

GVT does not measure intangibles. Things like leadership do exist in hockey, and they do help to make your teammates better. However, there is no way to measure this through statistics, and any attempt to quantify it is futile. In effect, we are not trying to see what information is “hidden” in the statistics; we are simply trying to better characterize the information that is at hand”

Alright, on to the trade!

Jason Chimera
Pos: F
Goals: 8
Assists: 9
Games: 39
Offensive Goals Versus Threshold: 1.0

Not a top scorer by any means, but he’ll add a little bit and was projected by VUKOTA (Puck Prospectus’ projection system) to be at +1.4 OGVT for the season (in 60 games). Depending on who’s playing around him on the Capitals, his scoring may even go up.

Plus/Minus: -7
Defensive Goals Versus Threshold: -0.1

Had a +/- of +8 last year, and -5 the year before that. VUKOTA had him contributing more on defense than on offense with a +2 DGVT. Maybe dial that down a touch rate-wise, but as long as he’s playing more that might be accurate as a raw number.

Overall, Chimera looks like around a 3-4 GVT player. With 6 goals being a win, and one win being worth about $3 M on the open market, that would make Chimera worth about $1.5 to $2 M. He’s going to be paid $1.875 M both this season and next, so his contract looks just about on the button. One could theoretically take into account the amount by which acquiring Chimera increased the Capitals’ chances of making the playoffs (where is certainly worth something), but I think the effect would be negligible.

Clark wasn’t expected to add much on offense – VUKOTA projected him at just 0.1 OGVT – but it seems he’s done even less than that.

Plus/Minus: -4
Defensive Goals Versus Threshold: -0.8

He was projected to have a +0.6 DGVT this season.

Overall, the 33 year-old isn’t a major contributor to the team. He makes $2.63 M this season and $2.63 M more next season before his contract is up, so in some respects it’s a plus just to get that off the books.

The guy isn’t exactly a scoring defenseman. He had just 3 goals and 11 assits last season, and is likely around zero with the OGVT in the near future.

Plus/Minus: 0
Defensive Goals Versus Threshold: -1.0

VUKOTA had projected Jurcina to be a +2.9 DGVT player this season, and with numbers this small the precision becomes an issue. Maybe say he’s a +2 DGVT (for a full season) guy going forward.

Overall, Jurcina hasn’t played all that well and despite his size isn’t an impact defenseman. He’s making $1.375 M this season, and will be an unrestricted free agent. At -2 Goals Versus Threshold, Jurcina wouldn’t actually be worth anything. As a 2 GVT player (all on defense), he would be worth about $1 M. Therefore he was just worth his salary at best, and isn’t a loss to the team.