Thursday, October 13, 2005

Thursday Roundup/Hurricanes 7, Capitals 2

[Boxscore - Recap]

Brutal. I didn't actually see the game (mercifully), so I'll let the pros (WaPo, WTimes) catch you up on all the gruesome details, but let's look at some of the numbers together, shall we?
  • Number of goals scored by Carolina Wednesday night versus the Caps: 7
  • Number of goals scored by Carolina in its other three games: 7
  • Number of power play goals scored by Carolina Wednesday night versus the Caps: 3 (in 7 attempts)
  • Number of power play goals scored by Carolina in its other three games: 0 (in 15 attempts)
  • Number of goals scored by Atlanta this past weekend in two games against the Caps: 15
  • Number of goals scored by Atlanta in its other two games: 0
  • Number of power play goals scored by Atlanta this past weekend in two games against the Caps: 8 (in 23 attempts)
  • Number of power play goals scored by Atlanta in its other two games: 0 (in 15 attempts)
Adding it up:
  • Total goals scored by Atlanta and Carolina in three games against the Caps so far: 22
  • Total goals scored by Atlanta and Carolina in their five games against other NHL teams: 5
  • Total number of power play goals scored by Atlanta and Carolina against the Caps: 11 (in 30 attempts)
  • Total number of power play goals scored by Atlanta and Carolina against other NHL teams: 0 (in 30 attempts)
This just in: the Caps defense is even worse than we feared, and as a result the penalties start to pile up and that leads to a flood of goals against. The Caps lead the League in PIMs per game (and all but 10 of those minutes are minors) and are near the bottom of the League in penalty killing - a horrible combination. Since opening night (when somehow Columbus was unable to score on any of its nine power play opportunities), the Caps have successfully killed off just 66% of the penalties they've taken. Craptastic. The offense (what offense other than AO?) and goaltending aren't without blame either, but we'll save them for another day.

Tonight the Isles come a-callin', and I'm sure that Messrs. Satan and Yashin are just licking their chops (they'd probably jog to D.C. if for some reason the team had travel issues). Coach Hanlon will throw Brent Johnson to the wolves, as the Farmington, MI native will get his first start in a Caps sweater (guess who's wishing he'd cleared waivers last week?). Of course the Caps are 2-0-0, allowing only two goals against per game outside of the Southeast Division. How's that for optimism?

In other NHL news:
Daily Awards
Update:

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's going to be a long tough year. I am not calling it yet, but it hard to watch right now. Still just glad to have hockey bad.

Great points. Keep up the good work.

D said...

Ouch. At least there was the "own goal" to amuse us. Even if that's more common to my sport than this one.

DCSportsChick said...

That own goal was SWEET, even if it doesn't get rid of the nasty 7-goal aftertaste. Oh well.

Anonymous said...

Roloson should've gotten the Vezina last night after shutting out Vancouver's potent offense. He turned away the same number of shots and faced more shorthanded, too.