The Washington Capitals penalty kill has gotten off to a pretty good start. Early on this season, the team has had to kill off 18 penalties. They have successfully killed 83.3% of those penalties. Their ranking has them tied for ninth, but it is early in the season. If the Capitals had the same percentage at the end of last season they would have been ranked fifth.
Last season the Capitals finished sixth in penalty kill percentage killing 82.6% of the penalties they took.
Percentages will fluctuate, team’s rankings will go up and down. That’s just the way it goes throughout a season, shortened or not. Still, getting off to a good start, especially for a team who had success on the penalty kill last season, it’s a very good sign. It’s particularly a good sign because the Caps are still going to the box more than most would like.
So the Capitals are doing just a little bit better on the kill than last season. I thought it would be interesting to go ahead and take a look at how many chances the team is giving up compared to a season ago. Is the penalty kill really better? Or are they getting fortunate? We’ll soon find out!
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The Caps have been shorthanded 18 times so far this season. In those 18 kills they have given up 19 scoring chances. That’s pretty easy to figure out, they give up a chance per kill pretty much. But to be exact, they do in fact give up 1.05 chances per kill.
To compare to a good penalty killing season last season, the Caps gave up 303 chances on 241 times being shorthanded. That equals giving up 1.25 chances per kill.
This season the Caps have given up just seven high danger attempts against while on the kill. That means they give up .38 high danger attempts a kill. Last season the Capitals gave up .46 high danger attempts per kill.
Just to round this out, so far the Caps are giving up 1.22 shots per penalty kill. Last season they gave up an identical 1.22 shots against.
Pretty good. During the penalty kill you want to limit shots, but even more important you want to limit chances and high danger chances. The Capitals are doing better limiting chances early on this season than they did last season and last season was a good penalty killing season.
I think it would be a mistake to talk about the penalty kill and not mention the goaltenders. You will often hear how a goalie has to be your best penalty killer. With that being the case we should take a look at how they’re doing so far this season.
The goaltending duo ranks in the bottom half of the league in save percentage at 86.36%. That ranks 18th in the league so far. Last season it was slightly worse, ranking 21st with a 85.81% save percentage.
The two goaltenders the Caps have this season are a little mixed in terms of results. We see Samsonov has a total save percentage of .875% while on the kill while Vitek Vanecek has a poorer .857%. However, Vanecek has had more success with high danger shots against. He has faced four high danger shots again saving three of them. Samsonov on the other hand has only faced one and he did not save it.
Just because we are comparing things to last season we might as well do it here as well. Samsonov last season had a .874% percentage while his partner Braden Holtby had a .850% save percentage. Samsonov had a .727% high danger save percentage and Holtby carried a .714% percentage.
The goaltenders could be better while on the penalty kill. This is a good team on the PK and their save percentage ranks bottom half even bottom third of the NHL in the last two seasons. Imagine if they were a little better.
So far so good for the Capitals penalty kill. It’s a little bit better than last season, and quite frankly, I think there is even room to improve for this area of the game for this team.