The Capitals themselves probably won’t admit it, but the wear-and-tear of the 82-game NHL season was evident in Tuesday’s listless 3-0 loss to the Ottawa Senators — a shutout that saw a road-weary Washington team’s 14-game point streak come to an end.
Playing their third contest in four days and the second game of a back-to-back, the Capitals were plagued by careless penalties, created few serious scoring opportunities and generally lacked some of the bite that coach Barry Trotz has grown accustomed to seeing from this year’s squad.
“I didn’t think we had a lot of juice,” Trotz said. “From my standpoint, I can tell when we have juice on the bench and when we don’t. We looked like a bit of a tired hockey team.”
“[We’ve had] a lot of travel lately,” Trotz continued. “We got home for 18 hours or whatever it was the other day from Dallas and St. Louis. We just weren’t as sharp, and it showed on our bench and we weren’t able to generate.”
Playing twice in two days — the Capitals won the night before at home against Carolina, 6-1 — has been trouble for Washington. The Capitals are 32-10-6 on the season, but just 3-4-1 in the second half of those pairs of back-to-back games.
It’s part of the tough grind of the NHL. Three of those four losses came in away matchups, and the overtime loss against the Pittsburgh Penguins came in an away game as well. The lone away win the Capitals have this season in the second half of a back-to-back came against the Calgary Flames, and that was back in October.
The fatigue shows up on the score sheets. In the eight games this season in which the Capitals played the night before, Washington is averaging 9.13 penalty minutes per game, a little above their average of 8.57 in non-backto-backs. Their total shots for and total shots against are also telling. In the second half of back-to-back games, the Capitals average 29 shots and allow 30.38. In non-back-to-backs, the Capitals average 29.85 shots and allow 27.97.
That statistical difference is significant, according to hockey writer and statistician Tom Awad.
Teams generally generate more shots when they trail than they do if they are up, Awad writes in Rob Vollman’s “Hockey Abstract.”
Awad analyzed data for three seasons and found that teams down by two or more goals tend to outshoot opponents by six shots or more per 60 minutes of play. If teams are down by a goal, they outshoot opponents by more than three shots per game.
But that’s not happening for the Capitals in the second half of back-to-backs. Against Ottawa, from the point Washington surrendered the second goal at the 4:10 mark of the first period, Ottawa took another 30 shots on goal. The Capitals recorded just 29.
In most of their losses on the back-to-backs, the Capitals are dramatically outshot — they don’t even gain ground when they are trailing on the scoreboard.
The metrics are even more troubling if shot attempts — meaning anytime the Capitals take a shot, whether or not it even makes the net — are adjusted for score, using hockey analyst Eric Tlusky’s score-adjustment system. Tlusky’s a formula takes into account how teams tend to allow more shots than they attempt when they have a lead.
In these four losses, the Capitals were out-attempted in every game, except for a Dec. 17 back-to-back that resulted in a loss to the Montreal Canadiens. Even then, adjusted for score, they only took six more attempts.
The Capitals were better last year the second game of in back-to-backs, finishing 9-5-1 en route to a President’s Trophy.
This year, they’re trailing the top teams in the Metropolitan Division. The Columbus Blue Jackets are 6-2-3 on second-night games, the Pittsburgh Penguins are 3-2-3 and the New York Rangers are 7-2-0.
The bad news is the Capitals have seven more pairs of back-to-backs on the schedule, with four of those in away arenas. The good news: Once the playoff start, those second-day games are a thing of the past.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.