This post will not be fun.
At best, this post will be cathartic and maybe a little informative.
But this post, it bears repeating, will not be fun.
As you know, the Washington Capitals suffered their ugliest loss of the season last night, an 8-4 drubbing at the hands of the Islanders. Just how bad was the Caps’ defense last night? Here’s a chart of their expected goals-against per sixty for each game so far this year:
Yes, the y-axis is altered to make it look at bad as possible. But when you yield 25 percent more expected goals than your previous season-high, this is the treatment you get. In fairness, last night’s 3.54 xGA/60 at five-on-five is “only” the 49th-worst effort a team has put up so far this season (heck, it wasn’t even the worst xGA/60 last night… congrats, Sabres!), if that makes you feel any better:
The Caps allowed high-danger chances at their worst rate of the season, too, leading to this nightmare of a heat map:
And now it’s time to name names. Why? Why not. (Also, because literally every Cap that got a sweater last night was on the ice for at least one goal-against!)
Below are the eight goals the Caps allowed, each accompanied by a poll asking you to identify which Cap was the most responsible for the goal (poll options are listed in order of jersey number, uh… just a coincidence, Brenden Dillon). To be sure, most of them were not the fault of just one man. Some might not even have been anyone’s “fault,” per se. But that’s not how scapegoating works.
Without further ado…
And with that, let’s never speak of this game again.