Caps Host Devils in Final Home Game of 2016
Caps start home-and-home set with New Jersey to finish off the 2016 portion of the 2016-17 season.
© Patrick McDermott
By
Mike Vogel
WashingtonCaps.com
Thirty-three games into their 2016-17 regular season schedule, there is only one Metropolitan Division foe remaining for the Capitals to face. That foe is the New Jersey Devils, and on Thursday the Caps and Devils will meet for the first time this season at Verizon Center. The game is also the front end of a home-and-home set; the Caps will head north to face the Devils in Newark on Saturday afternoon.
The home-and-home set with the Devils will conclude the 2016 portion of Washington's 2016-17 schedule, and it will account for half of the season's series between the Caps and New Jersey.
Although the Capitals are 7-2-2 in their last 11 games, they've also dropped three of their last four (1-2-1). Most recently, the Caps suffered a 4-3 loss to the Islanders in New York on Tuesday night in their first game back in action after the NHL's three-day holiday break. The Caps fell behind in the first period of Tuesday's game and rallied twice to tie, but were never able to take a lead.
"When you come back from any kind of break," says Caps coach Barry Trotz, "you're either really sharp or not so sharp. And usually you're not so sharp. And so we talked about how it was important for us to have everybody share the load, because even with a couple of days off you lose a little bit of your hands and a little bit of your conditioning. The body hasn't been in motion for a few days, the way it usually is.
"So we talked about sharing the load, details and playing with a lot of determination. If you play with the details, it will help you sort out the chaos a bit, when chaos hits in your own end or through the neutral zone or wherever. And I didn't think we were as systematically detailed as we needed to be, so we had trouble sorting things out. We had some duplication in some areas - in all three zones - which showed me we weren't as detailed in our structure as we wanted to be."
Washington and New York combined for eight power play opportunities in Tuesday's game, but neither of the two teams was able to score with the extra man. All seven goals in the game were scored at even strength, the most even strength goals scored in any of Washington's 33 games thus far this season.
"The good thing is we did score three goals at five-on-five," says Trotz of Tuesday's loss to the Islanders. "We had some push and we had some really good looks. We had a couple of breakaways and what have you. We created enough offense or chances to win a hockey game without special teams.
"The other silver lining is the penalty kill was really good [Tuesday] night again. I just didn't like the way we played in some of the details and the way we gave up the four goals. Individual mistakes, group mistakes and we just weren't very detailed in what we've been pretty detailed in for a while here."
With two games remaining in calendar 2016, the Caps are seeking to reach the 50-win plateau for the year. Washington enters Thursday's game with a 48-20-10 mark in the 78 regular season games it has played in calendar 2016.
Early this season, the Devils' surprisingly fast start was one of several elements fueling the overall dominance of the NHL's Metropolitan Division. New Jersey suffered only three regulation losses in its first 15 games (9-3-3). Back on Nov. 16, the Devils were a single point behind Washington, which was tied with Pittsburgh for second place in the Metro standings. The Devils were only five points off the division lead at that juncture of the season, and they had two games in hand on the front-running New York Rangers.
Over the summer, the Devils added winger Taylor Hall in a surprising trade with the Edmonton Oilers. Hall contributed five goals and a dozen points over the first 14 games of the season before undergoing knee surgery that sidelined him for eight games, and the Devils went just 2-4-2 in his absence. But New Jersey has been unable to get back on track even after Hall returned on Dec. 1. The Devils have won only four of their last 20 games (4-12-4).
Hall suffered a lower body injury in New Jersey's 5-2 home ice loss to Pittsburgh on Tuesday, and he is currently listed as day-to-day. Hall won't play on Thursday against the Capitals, nor will veteran pivot Vern Fiddler. Fiddler also suffered a lower body injury on Tuesday against the Penguins, but he's expected to miss 3-4 weeks.
The Devils are the only one of the eight Metropolitan Division teams to have won fewer than five of their last 10 games. New Jersey is 1-8-1 in its last 10, and it has been outscored by a combined total of 38-16 over that span. The Devils have dropped to the cellar of the Metropolitan Division and the Eastern Conference standings. They now stand 11 points south of Washington and 20 points in arrears of the Penguins, who currently sit atop both the Eastern and the Metro standings.
New Jersey has already played more than half (21 of 41) of its road slate for 2016-17, but the Devils have won only four of those 21 away games (4-12-5).
The Devils are last in the league in shots per game (27.9) and have allowed the seventh most shots on net (31.6). The Devils are 27th in the league in goals per game at 2.29 and they're tied for 25th in goals against per game at 3.00.
Washington is 18-1-0 this season when scoring three or more goals, and New Jersey netminder Corey Schneider has surrendered three or more goals in 12 of his last 15 starts.
