Breaking down the Washington Capitals special teams.
Special teams can make or break seasons. When you need a goal, if you can’t get one when given an opportunity on the power play it may be the difference between advancing or going home. The same can be said for the penalty kill. If you have a lead that you need to preserve and your penalty kill can’t keep the puck out of the net, that could easily be the reason you’re sitting at home rather than playing in the later rounds of the Stanley Cup playoffs.
Over the past several seasons the Washington Capitals have been pretty blessed with good special teams. In fact, going back to the lockout season of 2013 Washington ranks in the top ten in both power play and penalty kill percentage. The power play tops in the league in that time. In 609 games played they have a power play percentage of 22.8%. The Penguins come in second at 22.4%. The penalty kill ranks tenth in that time killing 81.7% of the penalties the team has taken.
The Capitals are one of six teams to have both of their special teams rank in the top ten since the lockout season. The other five teams being the Bruins, Penguins, Lightning, Blues and Sharks. To me, it’s no coincidence that all of these teams have won Stanley Cups or made Stanley Cup runs. The Capitals have a Cup, the Penguins have two, the Lightning have a Cup with another final appearance and the Bruins and Sharks have three final appearances between them.
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How much more proof do you need that special teams are absolutely huge?
You might not need both special teams going at an elite pace, but you definitely need at least one going, and in my opinion that’s the PK. You tend to see more bad power play teams go far than bad penalty kill teams.
As we all know, the Capitals have a new head coach and with that brings in a new coaching staff, or at least a partly new staff. With the new coach you look to see what coaches are responsible for what.
The power play will fall into the hands of Blaine Forsythe. He’s been with the franchise for over a decade and been an assistant for over ten years now. Forsythe has been in charge of the power play for several seasons now, helping the team to their good power play record. I can’t imagine the power play will look too different.
When you have players as talented as the Capitals I tend to think those kinds of players will eventually figure it out if they struggle at all. Then if you have a guy like Alex Ovechkin all you have to do is find him the smallest amount of room and he can get you a power play goal.
Even after coming off a down year for them, a year which saw them have a 19.4% power play, I wouldn’t worry too much about it. I think this team will be fine on the power play and expect them to get back into the twenties in percentage.
The penalty kill, which ranked sixth last season at 82.6% will also have a familiar face. Scott Arniel will resume his coaching duties of the PK. His first season in charge of the penalty kill wasn’t great at 78.9% which ranked 24th that season.
Of the special teams the penalty kill has been more up and down. So what could the penalty kill number look like? From the 14-15 season until the 19-20 season Laviolette coached Predator teams had a 80.7% penalty kill.
This Capitals team on paper looks better defensively. They have coaches that have proven to be good on the penalty kill. In my mind, 80-81 percent should be the number to look for. If they finished somewhere in that area last season they would have been top half of the league. Of course they did better and finished high than that. Anything better than 81% and they had another very good penalty killing year.
Special teams are huge. If the Capitals want to make another run they are going to need their special teams to contribute. Luckily for them they have a team proven they can excel at both the power play and penalty kill. They also have coaches that have great records at coaching both.
It could be another good year for the Capitals special teams. If that’s the case expect a run come playoff time.