Caps Have Saturday Night Date with Devils
Washington closes out the calendar 2017 portion of its 2017-18 schedule with a Saturday night visit from the Devils, with top spot in Metro at stake
Washington wraps up the calendar 2017 portion of its 2017-18 schedule on Saturday night when the New Jersey Devils come to the District for the first of their two visits here this season. It's the second meeting between the two Metro Division rivals this season; the Caps earned a 5-3 win over the Devils in New Jersey on Oct. 13.
The Capitals go into Saturday's game with a chance to leap over the front-running Devils in the Metropolitan Division standings. Washington trails New Jersey by a single point in the standings and can hop over the Devils with a regulation win on Saturday.
Thursday's 4-3 come-from-behind victory over the Boston Bruins in a shootout cooled one of the league's hottest teams and halted the Capitals' three-game losing slide (0-1-2). New Jersey is also one of the league's hottest teams; the Devils saw their own five-game winning streak stopped in a 4-3 overtime loss to the Buffalo Sabres in Newark on Friday night, but Jersey has still collected at least a point in seven straight games (5-0-2).
Thursday's win over the Bruins concluded a short but brutal stretch of scheduling for the Capitals, who were one of just three NHL teams to play a set of back-to-back games both before and after the league's three-day holiday break. Washington played three of those four games on the road and one at home, meaning that travel was involved for all four games.
Running the table on such a stretch is a virtual impossibility, and getting six or more of the eight possible points would seem to be a Herculean task. Thursday's win over the Bruins left the Caps with four of a possible eight points (1-1-2) during that stretch, enough to prevent a serious nosedive in the Metro.
The Caps know they can play better hockey in a lot of areas. They also know they've got a shade more than half a season with which to achieve that goal. The most important thing is to be able to consistently accumulate points while getting better, and the Caps have been able to do that, too, going 18-7-2 over their last 27 games. That's a 115-point pace over the equivalent of a third of a season.
But while Washington has continued to sail the Atlantic, forging a 9-3-1 record against Atlantic Division foes this season, it has been only ordinary against its fellow Metropolitan Division denizens. The Caps are 5-3-1 against Metro clubs, and they'll likely need to improve in that regard to maintain their standings position. Ten of the Caps' next 15 games come against Metro opposition.
Earlier this week, Caps coach Barry Trotz was asked about his team's upcoming stretch of Metro-heavy scheduling.
"Obviously every divisional game - I think there are seven teams within seven points of each other," says Trotz. "So you do the math, they're all important now."
They are all important, but those Metro games are four-point games and they're going to be critical in ultimately determining which teams finish where at season's end. That's why it's probably better for the Caps to be facing so many Metro games now as opposed to earlier in the season when they weren't as healthy and they weren't playing as well.
"Yeah, I think we're in a better place as a team," says Trotz. "I think obviously we didn't have [Matt Niskanen] and [Andre] Burakovsky, and we weren't a very good team at the start of the year. We had a lot of issues. I think we've grown out of that, hopefully.
"But every game is a new entity. [Just because] we've had a good stretch doesn't mean we're going to continue to have a good stretch. We've got to play good hockey, we've got to get our work ethic at a high level and our execution at a high level."
Heading into Saturday's slate of NHL activity, a total of 10 points separates the eight teams in the Metropolitan Division. Each of the top five teams in the Metro would make the playoffs if the season ended today, and only six points separate those five clubs.
"I think we are comfortable with where our game is right now," says Caps winger Brett Connolly. "We know we need to do things a little better, but I think we're ready to handle that.
"Obviously, the schedule picks up a little bit after Christmas, and we're on the road a little more. We had that nice, long homestand [in November and early December] which was really nice for us earlier. But every game is important and we've just got to get points when we can. There are going to be tough stretches down the stretch here, and we're going to have games when we're not great.
"But when we can get points, we need to take them because there are a lot of games against the Metro, and those are always big games. You want to keep climbing when you can."
Speaking of climbing, how about those Devils? Out of the playoffs for five straight seasons, the Devils finished the 2016-17 campaign with just 70 points, the franchise's lowest total for a season of 80 or more games in duration since the 1988-89 Devils missed the playoffs by managing only 66 points over an 80-game slate in a 21-tearm circuit. But they're currently occupying the top spot in the Metropolitan Division, and with 50 points in 37 games, they own a .676 points percentage which ranks third in the league and second in the Eastern Conference.
As you'd expect, Taylor Hall leads the Devils in scoring with 36 points, but each of New Jersey's next three leading scorers are rookies, and two of them are teenagers. Nico Hischier, the top overall pick in the 2018 NHL Draft, and Jesper Bratt, the Devils' fifth-round choice from the 2017 Draft, are tied for second on the team with 24 points and Hobey Baker Award-winning defenseman Will Butcher is fourth with 23 points.
Over the last five seasons, the Devils averaged 2.25 goals per game, finishing 29th in the league in that category over that span. A severe lack of offense might have been the Devils' most identifying characteristic during those five years, but New Jersey invested its high draft choices in forwards, and those choices are beginning to pay some dividends. The Devils are getting a good deal of secondary scoring from up and down their lineup, and they rank seventh in the NHL in goals per game (3.14) this season.
