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I thought I’d take a closer look at the Washington Capitals power play since the game in Calgary on October 21, when Coach, before the next contest in Phoenix, took the team to task for ignoring one of the fundamentals of a successful power play – creating traffic in front of opposing goalies.
What I found is more love for Brooks Laich. In that span, the Caps have scored 7 PP goals (7 for 40, 17.5%). Not so great. But Laich has been on ice for 5 of those 7 goals, scoring 3 of them.
As you might suspect from Brooks, those 3 goals he scored on the PP came via a mid-slot wrister, a top of the crease bang-in, and another top of the crease tip. And on another PP goal (Nov. 12 @ Carolina), he screened goalie Michael Leighton perfectly from Mike Green’s blast from the point. All that from being in the right, traffic-creating position.
capitals.nhl.com
Overall, Laich leads all Caps in goals through 60 minutes of PP ice time, with 3.92, leaps and bounds ahead of the second-best PP goal scorer in Mike Green (2.49). Fleischmann is third at 1.69. Also, as you might expect from the above (discounting a statistical aberration from Eric Fehr’s very brief PP time thus far this season), Laich leads all Caps in average number of PP goals scored while he’s on the ice (7.84 goals per 60).
(By comparison, tonight’s opponent, the Anaheims, features three players whose team averages over 10 PP goals per 60 PP minutes when they are on the ice: Ryan Getzlaf, 11.31; Corey Perry, 10.83; and Teemu Selanne, 10.69. Yikes, stay outta the box, boys.)
So maybe Laich really is rounding into that key PP presence at the top of the crease that every team desperately needs?
Does this mean that Boudreau should send him out more often on the power play? Well, he’s already on the ice for roughly half of the team’s total PP time per game, at least in the last five games.
Just know that when #21 is on the Caps power play unit, the odds of it scoring get a whole lot better.
