Caps are where Leafs want them
There are probably a few factors fuelling Mike Babcock’s unabashed confidence that the Maple Leafs will yank themselves out of a 3-2 series hole and force a Game 7.
There’s ego, sure, and genuine faith in the talent of his players. And maybe, too, there’s the old-fashioned feeling a coach gets when he knows his team is parked deep inside another team’s collective head.
So on Saturday, a day after Babcock walked out of Washington’s Verizon Center in the wake of a Game 5 loss having all but guaranteed a Toronto victory in Sunday’s Game 6, the Leafs coach reiterated his immodest prophesy. He said he knows there’ll be a Game 7 in his mind and in his heart.
And maybe he knows it, too, in the stats. It’s no secret that the Washington Capitals have a history of competitive hiccups in situations of this nature. In the Alex Ovechkin era, they have a 1-5 win-loss record in Game 6s in which they held a 3-2 series lead.
When it comes to the NHL postseason, the Capitals are the Eastern Conference’s Masters Of Missed Chances, its Butchers of Big Moments, its Elite Ignorers of Opportunity’s Copious Knocks.
Am I over-hyping this angle? Yeah, probably. But here’s the real smoking-gun number. Since Ovechkin arrived, they have played 20 playoff games in which a win would have clinched a best-of-seven series. They’ve won five of them.
Five. Of. Twenty. Unless you’re batting for the Blue Jays these days, that’s not a good average.
So you’ll understand why, as much as Washington coach Barry Trotz spent some of Saturday underlining the importance of being ruthless — “You get an opportunity to push someone off a cliff, you need to push them off,” Trotz said — even that murderous analogy didn’t exactly strike fear in the hearts of Toronto’s roster.
“I think it makes me not ever want to go hiking with the guy,” Matt Martin, the veteran Leafs forward, said of Trotz.
There were laughs all around at Martin’s well-delivered zinger.
“The pressure’s been on them to win all along,” Martin said of the Capitals. “And now it’s on them to win again.”
Proven champions win under pressure. In the days since Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane arrived in Chicago, for instance, the Blackhawks have played 19 playoff games in which a Chicago victory would have clinched a series. Chicago has compiled a 16-3 win-loss record in those situations. That’s an .842 winning percentage in games with push-someone-off-a-cliff potential, compared to .250 for Ovechkin’s Capitals.
No one is suggesting it is Ovechkin’s fault the Capitals have never made it past the second round. He’s largely been a superior playoff performer, averaging 0.5 goals a game in the post-season, only a shade off his regular-season average of 0.6.
Still, in those 20 potential closeout games — and Ovechkin is a constant in all of them — the Great 8 has compiled just six goals, an average of 0.3 a game.
That’s a team-wide trend that’s not easy to explain. Washington, after all, is not just any NHL club. Going back to the first season an Ovechkin-led Capitals team made the playoffs, 2007-08, Washington is one of just two NHL franchises to score an average of more than three goals a game in the regular season. Only Sidney Crosby’s Pittsburgh Penguins have scored more.
But while the Penguins have maintained that offensive punch in the post-season, the Capitals have seen perennial dips come the springtime. They’ve found it especially difficult to score with playoff advancement on the line. In those 20 potential closeout games, they’ve scored a combined 26 goals all told — barely more than a goal a game.
Twenty. Six. Goals. And so they’ve had a 3-1 series lead and lost to Montreal in 2010 and the Rangers in 2015. They had a 3-2 series lead and lost to the Rangers in 2013.
Before the series Babcock spoke of the “pucker factor” that afflicts a team saddled with the big expectations. Now, the margins are slim in the playoffs, and luck is always a factor. But Washington’s chronic inability to put pucks in nets in these situations seems to make Babcock’s case.
“We miss something,” Ovechkin said after last year’s second-round exit to the Penguins.
The Capitals have searched exhaustively for that missing piece. A couple of summers ago they signed Justin Williams, hockey’s Mr. Game 7 — and the overtime hero of Leafs-Capitals Game 5. When Williams came to the Capitals, he had an impeccable clutch-time reputation, including a Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP and three Stanley Cup rings.
When he joined the team, Williams spoke of having a pre-signing conversation with Trotz: “(Trotz) expressed that he felt I could be a big part of this team and help this team get over the hump.”
Over the hump or over the edge — since Williams came to town the Capitals are 1-2 in post-season closeout games, scoring a total of two goals in three contests. New blood, similar result.
So maybe Babcock’s heart and mind are simply telling him what Washington’s historic numbers strongly suggest — that this series looks headed for a Game 7 cliffhanger.
The hiker ultimately left standing on the mountaintop will be the one unafraid to make the final, coldblooded push.