Tuesday night the Washington Capitals played a low-event game against the Columbus Blue Jackets (until the third period), eventually losing 2-1 in overtime. The highlight of this game was a sublime second period goal by Nicklas Backstrom, and his excellent game overall. The lowlights included a go-ahead goal disallowed and Alex Ovechkin seeing very little ice time.
The Caps finished the night with 44 shot attempts at five-on-five while the Jackets finished with 45. The third period was the most lopsided, with the Jackets putting 13 pucks on net to just 3 from the Caps. Attempts in that period were 20-10 for the Jackets.
You may have already seen that last night Alex Ovechkin skated the lowest amount of the season to date, and one of the lowest amounts of his career. Let’s take a look at some of the other ongoing trends that played out.
- The Caps have been above 50 percent even-strength possession in only one of their last seven games (their shutout loss to the San Jose Sharks). In fairness they ticked in at exactly 50 percent in two others, and are still fifth in the league in score adjusted possession. But that’s down from where they were ranked before.
- Dimitry Filipovic of Sportsnet wrote about “what’s real and what’s not” one month into the season, and it bodes well for the Caps. The aforementioned score-adjusted possession is an excellent indicator of future success. Dropping from first in that stat down to fifth is still a strong showing by the Caps.
- Jay Beagle had the lowest even-strength ice time on the team, with 9:52. That’s the good news, the bad news is that he spent most of it with Andre Burakovsky (8:04) and Ovechkin (7:52). During that time they were heavily outshot, with Beagle turning in a minus seven in shot attempts, Burakovsky at minus six and Ovi at minus five.
- The Capitals generated at least seven net-front shot attempts at even strength, while the Jackets only generated three. But, on the flip side, the Caps had no shot attempts from the slot while the Jackets had five. The Caps have allowed the 12th fewest high-danger shot attempts against and the fourth fewest high-danger goals against, so this isn’t a problem just yet.
- Dmitry Orlov and John Carlson have now skated 226 minutes together at even strength, and are 55.0 percent on score-adjusted shot attempts. Their shots-for, goals-for, and scoring chances-for percents are all above 50. They have seen 55 percent offensive zone starts, but overall this pairing is tilting the ice in favor of the Caps.
- Recently we argued that it’s not a bad idea for Tom Wilson to see more ice time, and recently he has been getting it. Wilson has seen above ten minutes at five-on-five in eight of his last nine games, and has been above 50 percent possession in six of those. That said, he’s been an anchor to his two most common forward partners of Evgeny Kuznetsov and Johansson. He’s seen better results in small sample sizes with Burakovsky and Lars Eller, who have both had possession boosts with Wilson as opposed to without him.
It’s definitely not time to sound the alarms, but after an abysmal showing against the Carolina Hurricanes and a mostly uninspired game against the Jackets, the process has not been as strong of late. Tonight will be of no help, as the Capitals have to regroup quickly and prepare to go to war against the Pittsburgh Penguins at home.
Stats courtesy of Natural Stat Trick and Hockeystats.ca. Headline photo credit Jamie Sabau/NHLI via Getty Images.
