With Halloween approaching, the Washington Capitals have had their share of both tricks and treats so far this season, looking scary to opponents on some nights and then other nights looking like they are mere ghosts of last year’s club.
Ten games in, Washington has a 6-4 record, which is good for a tie in the Metro in points with the Carolina Hurricanes (who have played one less game than the Capitals), and would be the top Wild Card in the East if the playoffs started today. They enter Halloween’s contest against the New York Islanders on Friday on a two-game losing streak, with one frightful loss to the Ottawa Senators on Saturday and a mildly spooky loss at the Dallas Stars on Tuesday.
So what has gone right so far for Washington, and what needs to be improved going forward?
The bright spot for Washington has been the goaltending tandem of Logan Thompson and Charlie Lindgren, who are giving the Capitals a chance to win most nights, even when the supporting cast is less than effective. Washington is averaging just 2.2 goals allowed per game this season, with one of those being an empty-net tally in the season-opening loss to the Boston Bruins.
Thompson, who didn’t allow a goal off a Stars stick Tuesday – Dallas’ only goal came off Washington defender Martin Fehérváry on a crossing pass in front of the net – still has posted a 1.44 goals-against and a .939 save percentage so far this year, and more impressively, hasn’t allowed more than two goals in a single start this year in which he is 5-2. So far he has gotten the nod in the starting role this season, with 7 of the 10 starts by him, and has shown he hasn’t had a drop off from last season at all.
Lindgren’s stats aren’t quite as sparkling, but two of his starts were also behind two of Washington’s worst performances this year, a 4-3 loss to the Vancouver Canucks back on October 19 which the team didn’t really show up for 40 minutes of a matinee, and a 7-1 thrashing by the Senators Saturday which was Washington’s worst performance at home since perhaps the 2004 lockout. He does have Washington’s lone shutout of the season, and really, the .882 save percentage is more a product of his defense than his performance.
Offensively, the Caps have been a much more uneven club, coming in to this coming weekend with just a single garbage-time goal in their last two games. Saturday, Washington tied a franchise record for fewest shots in a home game with 13, something that the team hadn’t done since the season where they landed the lottery win to draft Alex Ovechkin first overall in 2003-04. Tuesday against Dallas was more a case of bad luck than bad play, with three posts against one of the league’s best goalies in Jake Oettinger, but still ended up on the wrong end of a shutout.
The Capitals are still averaging 2.7 goals a game so far, although that number was over 3 before the two-game skid brought it below.
The power play continues to be a major concern, as despite some recent success moving them up to 21st overall at an 18.8 percent clip, Washington went 0-for-3 in Texas, including an opportunity in the game’s final six minutes to tie the score, but couldn’t get anything going, and nearly gave Dallas a breakaway chance with the slingshot gimmick failing late. The team really has failed to get much going with the extra man at times, and it seems like, despite having some forward talent, the endeavor has become something that opponents have figured out how to foil by blocking the lanes and forcing Washington to pass the puck.
A growing concern for Washington is also piling injuries, as the team lost Dylan Strome, who scored 29 goals last year and had 10 points in 9 games so far this season, to what could be a fairly significant lower-body injury in the ugliness of Saturday’s loss. The forward recalled from Hershey to help fill in for Strome, Ethen Frank, left Tuesday’s loss after a collision in the third period, so there may be another forward recalled from the Bears to help boost the offense and fill in for the injuries before Friday.
At times in October, the Capitals have looked like the team that ran to the Eastern Conference’s top seed, playing solid defense and getting timely goals. At others, Washington has looked lethargic, and that may be expected as teams coming off strong regular seasons the year before kind of realize that the key is to just get in the postseason, not necessarily use energy to secure a better seed.
This weekend, Ovechkin also will look to make NHL history again, perhaps against the same team that he broke Wayne Gretzky’s goals record against.
The Capitals host the Islanders on Halloween for their second meeting of the season, with the captain sitting at 899 goals, just one shy of becoming the first player to reach that milestone in the NHL. If he doesn’t score a goal at home, Washington heads to Western New York Saturday to face the Sabres.
Overall, while the results so far have been mixed, largely the Capitals are what was expected of them, largely competitive, but certainly with questions they will need to address at the deadline or via calling up prospects Andrew Cristall or Ivan Miroshnichenko to see if they can jolt the offense back to a productive form.
