246.95 – Amount of time (in minutes) that the Caps have played with a one-goal lead so far this season, the most in the League. That represents 28.6% of the team’s total ice time, nearly twice last year’s 14.6% of time spent up a goal (and actually is a larger percentage of time than the Caps spent with a lead of any size in 2013-14, 27.2%). Here’s how the Caps’ season breaks out so far, by score:
Back to their play when leading by one, the Caps have been outscored 12-to-6 (only Dallas has allowed more goals when leading by one and only five teams have a worse goals-for percentage in those situations), and have a 47.2 all-manpower Corsi-for percentage, 14th-best in the League (16th-best at five-on-five).
So yeah, it’s a bit of a problem. As Mike Vogel and John Carlson note (and we’ve touched on recently):
Still… playing with the lead sure beats the heck out of playing from behind – these aren’t the worst problems to have.
Most data via war-on-ice.com