March 01, 2007
Hockey Night in Washington: Caps vs. Lightning
At this point in the season, not even the mother of the guy in Slapshot's costume believes that the Caps are going to the playoffs. That said, let's all move on, shall we, and look at the progress of any team's second objective: improvement over last season.
Anecdotal evidence of individual player improvement is open to debate and difficult to agree upon. Instead let's look at cold, hard numbers that don't fib. Going into tonight's game against the Lightning, the Caps have played 64 games. Compared to first 64 games of the 2005-2006 season there's much to feel good about, even for the Caps fan with Chicken Little sensibilities.
For you stat geeks, the worksheet will be available on Google shortly. In the meantime,
Record
05-06: 22-25-7
06-07: 24-29-11
Points
05-06: 51
06-07: 59
Goals For (up 4.9%)
05-06: 184
06-07: 193
Goals Against (down 10.0%)
05-06: 250
06-07: 225
Power Play % (up 12.6%)
05-06: 15.34% (60/391)
06-07: 17.27% (57/330)
Penalty Minutes (down 11.2%)
05-06: 1148
06-07: 1020
Shots on Goal (down 6.5%)
05-06: 1932
06-07: 1802
Face Off Winning % (down 3.2%)
05-06: 50.53% (2048/4053)
06-07: 48.92% (1955/3996)
At this point in the day you're probably not looking for game day previews (and besides, you know where to find 'em). I do, however, want to mention this underappreciated site, The Score.ca. They provide excellent game day previews, including a Tale of the Tape (for you pugilism fans) and roster information broken out by country (for you xenophobes and nationalists).
* Novotny skated pregame and looks comfortable in his lucky #13.
* Scratches for the Caps: Fehr, Muir
* Scratches for TB: Roy, Richardson, Jones, and Janik (former Agawam Brownie)
Final
Caps lose in a 10-round shootout, 5-4.
Shots on Goal
Caps: 27
Lightning: 29
Notes
* Novotny skates 18 shifts for a total of 14:53. In Buffalo he was averaging 16 shifts and 12:19 TOI.
* Ovechkin was not one of the three designated shooters (Laich, Fleischmann, Semin) in the shootout. He takes shot #4.
A few highlights from a postgame conversation with the newest Capital:
* Last time Novotny took a shot in a shootout was two years ago in preseason game against the Caps. He scored on Kolzig.
* Novotny had a shoulder injury and did not play in the Dec. 2nd Sabres/Caps game (the Briere/Ovechkin incident) (the first one). He was very politic in his description of "the check."
* Despite several attempts at trying to elicit a negative comment about the new Buffalo jerseys, the worst I could get from him was, "it's not so bad."
Ken Berard can be reached at kpberard@gmail.com
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03:55 PM