What We Learned: Capitals, Rangers and Metro Division drama

(Hello, this is a feature that will run through the entire season and aims to recap the weekend’s events and boils those events down to one admittedly superficial fact or stupid opinion about each team. Feel free to complain about it.)

It must be difficult to have just six regulation losses in 24 games and be second in your division, but such is life for the Rangers.

They have 34 points, the fourth-highest total in the league, and it's still not good enough. And what's crazy is that, just a week ago, they had a five-point cushion over Washington. It has been erased because the Capitals are winners of five straight, and the Rangers have lost three straight.

As a consequence, there is the requisite finger-pointing on Broadway that this thing or that is wrong with the team. They aren't as tough any more and guys take liberties — take, for example, Friday's matinee against Boston, in which Derek Stepan had his ribs broken on a hit so late it just happened as I typed this, and Brad Marchand routinely got into Henrik Lundqvist's kitchen to the point that his coach cried about it for two days after the fact — so you gotta recall Tanner f'n Glass from the minors. Maybe you try to slot Jarret Stoll back into a more prominent role because there's a lack of grit at the bottom of the lineup. Maybe Chris Kreider has just sucked.

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What no one seems to be thinking in New York is, “Maybe this team just isn't that good.” There's all the winning in the last two years, sure, but you know what else there is? A whole lot of what appears at first glance to be luck.

On the chart below, you generally want to be in the middle on the Y-axis, and to the right on the X-axis. This indicates that your percentages are right about where you want them to be so as to generally keep them sustainable, and that you're dominating play even on a score-adjusted basis.

But you'll notice that the Rangers are well, well, well above everyone else, and pretty far to the left. They are, in fact, the third-worst possession team in the league (behind only Calgary and Colorado) but have the highest combined shooting and save percentage by 2.9 points (105.4 to 102.5).

The thing you have to keep in mind, though, is that teams with elite goaltending — which is obviously what Henrik Lundqvist, the world's greatest son, provides in spades — are always going to have high PDOs. From 2009-10 to present, the teams with the two highest PDOs are the Bruins (Tim Thomas/Tuukka Rask) and Rangers (Lundqvist). However, those league-leading numbers come in at 101 and 100.9, respectively, and while they're propped up entirely by the two best team save percentages over that time, one has to say that they're quite a bit lower than what the Rangers are doing now.

So even teams with the absolute very best goaltending tend to level out over time, and I think we can all agree that even if you're Henrik Lundqvist having the season of your life, a PDO starting with 105 — and it was 107.1 just a week ago — isn't built to last. The Rangers also have the league's highest shooting percentage even now, at 10.2 percent.

The Rangers losing a bunch of games was therefore inevitable, and it also makes sense that people would start looking for excuses as to why the team couldn't save .961 at evens, and shoot 11 percent in perpetuity. They might want to start with the fact that those numbers were coming when the team had a score-adjusted CF% of 47.2 percent, which has since deteriorated even more.

This is the downside of everyone praising your team to the heavens for being able to do that for 20 games to start the year, after all. No one in the Rangers' room was saying, “Hey it's great that we're winning but our process is garbage and we have to fix it,” when they were rocking a plus-30 goal differential at 5-on-5. Lots of goals for and very few against — the Rangers led the league in both categories by wide margins as of Nov. 23 — make you feel invincible even if how you're getting those wins is, shall we say, “2013 Leafs”-esque.

So now in the last three games the team has hit a rough patch, giving up 12 goals and scoring just four. The percentages have cratered. Harder than they should have, but those are the breaks. Watch any number of Rangers games this season, and the feeling is that they ought to be blowing leads like they did against Boston on Friday, but they don't, because Mats Zuccarello is having the 10-game stretch of his life, and Lundqvist is ever steady at the back to mop up any of the myriad mistakes the slipshod defense in front of him makes.

Meanwhile, here come the Capitals, whom you'll note from the above chart are somewhere in the middle and far enough to the right that there aren't too many teams passing them. Sound process, high-ish PDO that we could probably attribute to Braden Holtby being one of the five or so best goalies in the world, and having a lot lot lot lot lot of talent up front. If we concede that the Rangers will necessarily carry higher percentages than most based on their talent, we must also concede Washington will as well. Indeed, in that same 2009-present stretch mentioned before, the team with the third-highest PDO in the league, just a single tenth of a point lower than the Rangers, are these Capitals. For the season, their PDO is a more manageable 101, up two points from their number over the last seven seasons.

The Capitals have outscored their opponents 21-10 in the last five games, a differential that likewise isn't going to hold up for too long, but this is a team that has consistently kept things sailing smoothly all year with mostly ups and not a lot of downs (they're fourth in goals-for and third in goals-against, all situations). They're 17-5-1, which is a pace for 125 or so points. They probably won't get there because almost nobody does. But lots of people in Washington are casually throwing around their assertion that this Caps team is better than the ones that rampaged over the Southeast with a shocking breezy regularity just a handful of years ago. We have so far seen little reason to disbelieve them.

What's interesting is that while the Caps have been somewhat quietly improving themselves under a new GM and coach, adding useful depth pieces and making a middling splash via trade or UFA market here and there. the Rangers have spent the last few summers tearing down a legitimately good team. They've let very good players walk, misallocating resources on new ones who aren't that good, and re-upping pieces who don't really deserve to be paid what they are.

All of that, though, has been masked by just how good their core group of four or five outfield players — Derek Stepan, Ryan McDonagh, Rick Nash, Mats Zuccarello, etc. — are generally going to be, and the fact that Lundqvist's quality could make literally any team look much better than it actually is. Under Alain Vigneault, they've been to a Cup Final and a Conference Final, but they've also gone from a solid possession team (ninth for the Cup run) to a mediocre one (18th last season for the Conference Final bow-out), to an outright bad one this year. Each step down the ladder greatly diminishes the chances of repeating past success.

Lundqvist, though, is the great equalizer. As long as he's still playing at a high-ish level — and he's been well above that for the bulk of this year — they're going to get a chance to compete among the league's elite teams. Even if it's all with smoke and mirrors.

That doesn't portend well for Washington, which as we all know is saddled with this History Of Blowing It reputation for a number of reasons, but if the Rangers keep playing like they have, they're going to be a pretty low seed anyway. Whatever helps you get over the hump, I guess.

What We Learned

Anaheim Ducks: It seems we learned not to take late penalties against teams with as much talent as Chicago in a somewhat close game.

Arizona Coyotes: Mikkel Boedker played the Senators twice this season and scored three goals in each game. If it's an Ottawa/Arizona Cup Final, I know who I'm picking for Conn Smythe.

Boston Bruins: Quite frankly (haha) Frank Vatrano is playing more than well enough to be put on a line with Patrice Bergeron and Brad Marchand. It'll be fun and exciting when the Bruins trade Vatrano this summer for not throwing enough checks.

Buffalo Sabres: Carlo Colaiacovo is the third player in two days to get a cross check in the head, neck, or throat. Viktor Arvidsson won't face supplemental discipline. Very excited to see how many games the Department of Player Safety doesn't-give all the offenders combined, because they're going to not-suspend them a lot.

Calgary Flames: The Flames have three regulation wins this season and are dead last in the NHL. The reason why? You guessed it, baby: They're not getting mad at each other for all the losing. Hey fellas there's one guy to blame for all this losing, and he's the guy holding the Jack Adams and screaming for Deryk Engelland to try another stretch pass because it'll for sure work this time.

Carolina Hurricanes: Hmm, well, no.

Chicago: Know what else helps with your confidence is having at least four future Hall of Famers on your team.

Colorado Avalanche: You don't say. Hey gang it's not “injuries” that have the team's forward depth thinned out. It's “bad management.” Thanks.

Columbus Blue Jackets: Hilarious Thanksgiving Fools Day joke from DOPS. What do you mean that's not a thing?

Dallas Stars: If they played every game at 3-on-3 Dallas would literally never lose.

Detroit Red Wings: Nice that you even have the option to play Tomas Jurco in the minors for conditioning, where of course he's going to put up almost two points a game for a two-week stretch.

Edmonton Oilers: Shocking turn of events here: The Oilers misevaluated someone.

Florida Panthers: Who saw “The Panthers probably won't make the playoffs” coming as a season-long storyline? What's that? Everyone did? Hmm.

Los Angeles Kings: One of those stats that sounds profound but is actually not: The Kings are 10-1 when scoring at least three goals, but only 4-7-1 with two goals or fewer. Yeah, I bet it breaks down that way for almost every team.

Minnesota Wild: Well at least they got the point out of it, yeah?

Montreal Canadiens: Imagine Carey Price being out for another month or more? Again? Montreal has gotten lucky with Mike Condon playing pretty well, but he might enter the new year with like double the games played of Price. How long does his good play last?

Nashville Predators: Only six goals in their last six games for the Preds. But since they went three without a goal at all, that's not so bad.

New Jersey Devils: This starting to remind anyone of last year's Flames, in terms of the ability to win games late that they shouldn't be winning?

New York Islanders: Not sure how this one goes in but okay that's another point for John Tavares but now he has 21 in 21 games so that's good.

New York Rangers: It's me Alain Vigneault and not only am I not mad now but I have never been mad about anything in my life. I actually laugh about who the son is when I think about it. But I never think about it because actually I'm very busy and I actually have a life. I'm not mad at all.

Ottawa Senators: Chris Phillips is the fifth-best Senator ever? That seems... bad.

Philadelphia Flyers: Luke Schenn is good now, everyone. Because of a fight he got into. Good work Luke, the good hockey player.

Pittsburgh Penguins: Evgeni Malkin is like “I'm just trying to enjoy my blue Gatorade here guys come on.”

San Jose Sharks: We still love you, Tomas Hertl.

St. Louis Blues: Scottie Upshall on this third-period game-winner against Columbus: “I like scoring. I used to do a lot of it.” His career high is 37 points.

Tampa Bay Lightning: I didn't read the article but I hope the headline means Stamkos will re-sign in Tampa if Yzerman spends the night in his uncle's haunted house.

Toronto Maple Leafs: What the hell happened to Jonathan Bernier?

Vancouver Canucks: This is one of those things where someone looks like “a natural fit” with the Sedins until they don't. Remember when Alex Burrows was unstoppable alongside them? Jason King? Hmm. What is the common denominator here?

Washington Capitals: That's a hell of a secret.

Winnipeg Jets: The Wally Pipp-ening of Ondrej Pavelec is officially under way.

Play of the Weekend

The very underrated thing about The Malkin Goal is the way he closes the gap on Klefbom and lifts his stick in a stride and a half.

Gold Star Award

Big shout out to Brad Marchand who didn't have any points this weekend but lit up my life anyway.

Minus of the Weekend

Alain Vigneault takes this quiz every morning and sobs.

Perfect HFBoards Trade Proposal of the Week

User “Tbj4life” has some great ideas.

1st(Matthews)
RNH
Schultz

For

Sidney Crosby

Signoff

This town is a part of us all, a part of us all, a part of us all.

Ryan Lambert is a Puck Daddy columnist. His email is here and his Twitter is here.

(All stats via War On Ice unless otherwise noted.)