The current incarnation of the Washington Capitals isn’t what most onlookers would consider a “good” hockey team.
They’ve lost more games than they’ve won. They rank 29th in the League in scoring, 18th in goals against, 20th on the power play, 16th on the penalty kill, 30th in shots on goal, 21st in shots allowed and 30th in faceoff percentage. The underlying numbers aren’t really any better, with shot attempt, expected goal, scoring chance and high-danger scoring chance share all comfortably in the bottom-third of the League.
Should they make the playoffs, they may get there despite the worst goal differential in the cap era to qualify for the post-season.
And yet here we are.
To be fair, all of those numbers have been better over the past month and change (or, if you prefer, since a certain now former Cap was removed from the lineup). We know how misleading “aggregate” numbers can be, and the Caps have actually been… decent over that span. They aren’t a team that “no one will want to play in the playoffs if they get in,” but considering that they were dead and buried barely a month ago, we’ll take it.
How the Caps got here isn’t all smoke and mirrors, and the goal differential shouldn’t be too surprising – when you’re a team that doesn’t score and has a nearly unplayable “number one” goalie, you’re probably going to end up in the red – only two (absolutely putrid) teams have lost more games by three or more goals than the Caps (20); only four have won more one-goal games (16).
And that’s where Charlie Lindgren comes in. Get Chuckie a lead and he’s been damn-near automatic – of all goalies with 200-plus minutes played (Lindgren has 754), no one has a better save percentage when leading than Lindgren (.939; if you want a giggle, check out who’s last on the list). In games in which the Caps have provided Lindgren with an advantage on the scoreboard, they’re 18-0-4. That’s absolutely enormous for a team that lacks the capacity to flip the switch and come back in games like the mid-Boudreau Era Caps (to wit, they have the League’s fourth-best win percentage when scoring first and third-best when leading after the first period, but 21st when trailing first and 24th when trailing at the first intermission).
And now they’re more likely than not to make the playoffs:
“Win low-scoring nail-biters with your backup goalie when you’re not busy getting your doors blown off” isn’t exactly the profile of a Cup contender and, frankly, isn’t the profile of many playoff-caliber teams. But these Caps are the latter (at least literally), and they’ve been playing well enough for a while now to have their playoff fortunes in their own hands. In other words, they’ve got a lead – time to protect it, as they have all year.