While the Washington Capitals are well on their way to capturing the Metropolitan Division title and the Eastern Conference title, and find themselves in the running for the Presidents’ Trophy, their season has not been without stumbles. And with just seven games remaining, some concerns have cropped up as the team heads into the postseason. Let’s talk about ’em.
First up? The men between the pipes.
Goaltending. It seems crazy to say, considering how well both Logan Thompson and Charlie Lindgren were performing for most of the season, but over the last month or two the team’s goaltending just has not been good enough.
So far this season, Logan Thompson has the tenth-best Goals Saved Above Average (GSAA) rate at even strength with 9.22; most of that is buoyed by his performance over the first four months of the season, when he posted a .937 save percentage and GSAA of 15.56, both third-best among all goalies (min 1000 minutes).
Since the start of February, however, (aka less than a week after signing his new contract, which is troubling) that drops way down to the eighth-worst GSAA of -6.34 and ninth-worst save percentage of .886. Lindgren’s numbers have also dropped, although they didn’t start at the same gaudy level Thompson’s were at, nor have they fallen anywhere near as far – he went from -1.59 GSAA/.909 save % to -3.35/.889.
As a tandem, they gave up a combined 118 goals in the first 52 games through January 31, or 2.27 GA per game; since February 1, it’s 3.00 GA/game, having given up a combined 75 goals in 25 games. That’s not exactly bad, per se – that mark alone would put the Caps at 17th-best in goals against – but it is decidedly mid, and not what we came to expect from these two goalies.
More concerning – or just a product of recency bias – is the fact that this bad trend over the last two months has trended really bad over the last couple of weeks.
Recency bias or not, that’s not the direction you want something like this to go when the playoffs are mere weeks away, and when it comes to Thompson in particular, the concern may be a little higher because he’s nearing a new career-high in minutes played – two more starts will put him there – which would replace his current high set last year…which he followed up with four playoff games before being replaced by Adin Hill.
So goaltending is something to keep an eye on down the stretch for sure. The fact that the team has been able to outscore many goaltending mishaps of late is really the only reason they’ve had any level of sustained success – something that’s not a guarantee in the generally tighter defensive play in the postseason.