Over the course of the regular season, the Caps had the League’s fifth-rated penalty kill, successfully squashing a robust 82 percent of the man disadvantages they faced, with the underlying metrics to back up that ranking.
In the playoffs so far? Not so much. Granted, these are very small samples we’re talking about, but so far the Caps have only escaped eight of 13 shorthanded opportunities unscathed, leaving them with an unsightly 61.5 percent success rate. In three regular-season meetings with Montreal, the Habs only managed a single power-play in eleven opportunities.