I like a hockey team to play a solid 10 games in a new season before I weigh in with any value judgments on its roster relative to the previous season, and even then I don’t form hard and fast and unyielding impressions. The opening 10-game grade I’m awarding the Caps, despite their seemingly impressive 6-2-2 start, is incomplete.
This may seem a bit harsh for a club that’s suffered just two regulation-time defeats, but understand that this season, at its conclusion, I’m only grading on a pass/fail metric. I’m seeking a very prized puck pupil late next spring.
For starters, of the 10 games they’ve played, the Caps I believe have authored only two distinctly impressive performances — in Boston on opening night and against San Jose here on October 15. The rest left me wanting.
The positive: I wouldn’t want to bet against Alexander Ovechkin’s bettering his career-best tally of 65 goals in 2007-08. Three or four hat tricks and we could be talking 75 or 80. Wow. Brooks Laich is picking up where he left off last season. Matt Bradley has been a thoroughly unexpected goal scorer, while also taking care of business in his own end. Mike Green is heating up. Brian Pothier is fully recovered and playing solid hockey.
Prized pupils: newcomers Mike Knuble and Brendan Morrison.
The goaltenders have surrendered some softies, and 10 games in Semyon Varlamov fails to crack the list of the league’s 40 best goalies in either save percentage or goals-against, but overall that position on the ice appears reasonably solid. You have to figure that Varlamov is going to improve; his struggles thus far appear to have been of the mental variety. Jose Theodore has been solid (15th in save percentage, 17th in goals-against), but you know where I stand on where he needs to be come the playoffs.
The SouthLeast, as ever, remains an eyesore. With reasonable health the Caps could win this division by 15 points — while moderating the first line’s minutes the last half of March, too. Atlanta likely is considerably improved over last season, but that isn’t saying much. And what if they’re truly the second-best team in the division? Tampa nicely overhauled its blueline in the offseason, but I think the ‘Bolts have woes in net. I’ve long had the sense that the Hurricanes overachieved with their Everyman roster — particularly last spring. This October the ‘Canes are achieving like on paper is suggested they perhaps should (seldom), although Cam Ward you have to think will take it up a notch or three. When Florida rolled the dice with Jay Bouwmeester last spring, watched him walk, and did little to upgrade in the offseason you had to figure the ‘Cats were prime draft lottery candidates. They are.
The Caps are 5th in the league in scoring (3.6 goals per game). They are 14th in goals-against (2.90).
With the specialty teams, there’s work to be done. They’re a discouraging and inexplicable 20th on the power play, connecting just 16.7 percent of the time. On the PK, they’re good: 83.7 percent, good for 9th in the league. With PIMs, a perhaps surprising 11.3 minutes per game, good for sixth-best in the league; perhaps Alexander Semin’s recent absence from the lineup has something to do with that, although his three minors in eight games suggests a mild bit of maturation in that regard. Carolina takes a staggering 22.4 minutes of penalty a game (dead last).
Troubling: Seventeen clubs have more hits than the Caps’ 192. Pittsburgh, for instance, has 304; the Rangers have 315. The Caps have blocked 126 shots. Fourteen clubs have blocked more. Pittsburgh has blocked 194.
Encouraging: The Caps are winning 51.3 percent of their draws, ranking them just outside the league’s top 5. If Nicklas Backstrom can improve upon his early Halloween frightful 40.8 percent success rate the Caps can climb into the top 5 there.
Troubling: Defensively, in the scoring by period department, the Caps have surrendered just 5 goals in the opening stanza, 11 in the second, and 12 in the third. The eyes don’t lie: our third periods are a mess.
The owner yesterday chimed in yesterday with his own State of the Hockey Union message:
We aren’t playing as well as we can. We aren’t healthy. We can’t score on a power play on the road. We aren’t gelled as a defensive unit. We seem to lack some intensity. See? I read your emails but we are 6-2-2.
We are near the top of the East in goals scored; middle of the pack in goals against; and near the top in points garnered. We have won 4 games in a row - ugly wins - but wins just the same.
We have so much work to do.
I agree.
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