About That Improved Penalty Kill...

Ok, so it’s not my imagination that the PK is regressing. While they’re still aggressive, they’re not as aggressive as they were early in the season. Fingers crossed, I suppose.

the look of Laich’s face is like something out of the OTOT thread….derp!

Maybe other teams have figured out a common way to beat it over the last 13 games.

Your best penalty killer, I feel, has been a little fatigued, by his own admission, after a hot start. I do not fault the aggressive style, I rather think it creates many more opportunities to clear pucks out than opens doors for the attacking PP.

I’d like to know how many GWG’s the Caps gave up when they were on the PK. I think the winning record points to getting big kills when they need it most.

I think part of it has to do with the sequence of penalty killing, less so than their being inconsistent – although some of it has been less spectacular netminding.

They’ve faced a lot of power plays in pairs and they also had a lot of games in a row where they’ve faced a number of penalty kills but have had very few power plays themselves, which cuts into their offensive zone time and puck control and wears out their PK’ers.

Did a little bit of research. Out of the last 14 games (dating back to Oct. 19th against Boston), the Caps have faced 9 teams that have power plays ranked in the top 15 in the NHL.

The Caps are still 11th in PK % though, so I don’t think it’s a cause for concern at the moment. If it’s regressing in, say, February, then I think I’ll be a bit more worried.

The caps currently have the 2nd worst differential in TS to PP at -14 (behind ANA with a whopping -21). Throw it in with the twenty other stats you might use to try and explain what we’ve seen so far. Lately it has to feel like they aren’t getting many calls from the refs, and maybe that affects them. Like so many things, the PK is probably somewhere between who they were in those first six games and who they’ve been since.

We had that one game with 3 double minors, one of which was scored on. There also was at least one 5 on 3 where we were scored on (and one of our good PKers was in the box; hmmm). I don’t know how many 5 on 3’s there’ve been (and don’t have time to look now).

I wonder if time of penalty (i.e. first vs. third period) lately is reducing the PK effectiveness? I have no idea how to measure that but that’s what came to mind a few games back…thoughts?

#needsmoremackan?

Been waiting for a post like this. I’m hopeful that they will level off in the 85% territory that they currently occupy.

We shall see.

Even at the current “success” rate, the PK still looks far better than it did last year. You’re not going to stop 85% every single game, there will be highs and lows. Committing to being aggressive is enough that they’ll maintain an effective PK.

Hmmm, Boyd Gordon is one of our best PKers and he’s missed a bunch of games recently. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Caps’ winning streak with Gordon in the lineup correlates with better PK performance with Gordon on the kill.

that the PP and PK % generally add up to 100. Anything over 100 is pretty good. The league leaders in PK (the Kings and Habs tied at 90.1) combined with the PP% add up to 96.8 and 95.0 respectively. The Caps (83.8 + 22.7) add up to 106.5 while the overall leaders Minny and Vancouver are at 114.5 and 113.7. Last year the Caps finished with a total of 104.0 (78.8 + 25.2) second to SJ’s 106. All (literally) back of envelope numbers and maybe a bit off.

Does killing off a double minor count as killing off one penalty or two?

This is off topic for the topic title but it’s about the pictures here. Note: the expressions of Fehr and Johansson (?) with Johansson doing the “ooh” and Fehr doing the “ah”. It reminds me of the photo of Ovi and Semin on the Team Russia bench doing similar expressions.