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. While their season has not been without stumbles, there are plenty of positives about this team as they head into the postseason. Let’s talk about ’em.
We’ve looked at the Capitals’ overall offense. Next up? The team’s shorthanded prowess.
Penalties tend to go down in the playoffs (although there are always exceptions), which makes special teams that much more important once the postseason starts. The penalties you draw, you need to score on; the ones you take, you need to kill off. Thankfully when it comes to the second part of that equation, the Caps are in very good shape this season.
The first part…well, we’ll get to that another time.
The Capitals have been one of the better penalty-killing teams in the league this season, hanging around in the top ten for most of that time. They currently rank seventh overall with an 81.5% effectiveness rate, but are just a tenth of a percent shy of sixth (Tampa, 81.6%) and .20 from fifth-place LA (81.7%).
They’ve actually been much higher over the course of the year, and were as high as third up until a little over a week ago; a rough run that saw them give up six power-play goals in four games (including three in the loss to Carolina alone) unfortunately kicked them down a bit, but they’ve gone a perfect five-for-five since, so hopefully getting back in the positive.
One thing they’ve been really good at all season long is suppressing scoring and high-danger chances. When it comes to pure shot attempts, they’re about average, and have given up the fifth-most shot attempts while shorthanded in the league (652, tied with Toronto). But when it comes to keeping from teams from getting those golden scoring opportunities, they’ve been able to lock it down, with an 11th-best xGA/60 rate, a SCA/60 of a third-lowest 49.22, and HDCA/60 of a second-lowest 19.3.
They’ve also been able to do a little damage while shorthanded, ranking in the top-10 (…ish, they’re tied with a handful of teams) with six shorthanded goals on the season. Most of that has been a more recent trend, with four of those six shorthanded goals scored in the last 15 games.
Despite this latest blip, the Caps are still a very good penalty-killing team – an area in which they’ve been tested a time or two, given their tendency to take penalties on a fairly regular basis (but yeah, we’ll talk about that at a later time, as well). It’s something that should help them once the games get tighter and every game, every penalty, every play becomes that much more important.