The "Big Game"

It's not a secret that tonight will be one of the biggest games of the season for the Washington Capitals as they play host to the piping f'n hot 1st place in the NHL Nashville Predators.  From the Barry Trotz homecoming narrative to the "is this team for real" narrative, this game has a lot riding on it.  Not to be lost in all of that narrative is the fact that with the Rangers losing to Boston last night, as is always the case, two points tonight could prove valuable as we progress through the latter half of the season.  For a preview of tonight's match up, head over to The Peerless Prognosticator.

But that's not what I'd like to address today.  I am a little more interested in how the Capitals have fared in "big games" this season.  It's important to note that "big games" are largely, and admittedly, arbitrary.  For the sake of this post, I am going to define them as the following:

• All interdivisional match ups in the months of October and November.
• Interdivisional and intradivisional match ups against teams in playoff spots (to date).
• Interdivisional match ups against teams in Wild Card spots (to date).
• Interconference and intraconference match ups against contending teams (to date).

Though it may not be fair to count those match ups early on because the team had a new coach, they were adjusting to a new system, Braden Holtby hadn't found his groove yet, etc., I still think it's important to take a look at them for sake of completeness.  Here are the final results of those games that meet my criteria:

 Losses are highlighted in red (includes SO or OT losses here).

As you can see, their record in "big games" is fairly average, at 7-6-4.  But we haven't looked at the advanced stats for those games, which may tell a different story. Major thanks to my pal Ben Eisenberg from Stars and Sticks for the help here:

See Glossary below for term definitions.

On the face, these statistics are not very flattering, though if you remove the lows and the highs here, I suspect you'd have a slightly higher average as a whole.  None the less, the team certainly needs to possess the puck better against better teams, though their scoring chances have trended positively.  

Naturally, one could argue the merits of several other games this season being "big games" based on a variety of scenarios, so this is of course to be taken with a grain of salt.  But I'd say that the latter half Washington Capitals have so far fared much better than the former (2-4-3 vs. 5-2-1) in results, but not so much in possession. Regardless, I can't wait to see how tonight's match up plays out.

(So I went this whole time without talking about Filip Forsberg.  You're welcome)

Glossary:
Corsi = Shot Attempts = Shots + Missed Shots + Blocked Shots.
Corsi-Close = Corsi while a game is within 1 goal either way.
SCF% = Scoring Chances For %.
SCF-Close = Scoring Chances For while a game is within 1 goal either way.