This year's Caps, on paper, should block more shots than almost any team in the league. Last year, without any stalwart defensive defensemen, the Caps played defense by committee and placed a respectable seventh with 1257 blocks.
To be clear, blocking a shot in hockey is very painful. It's not like in football, where a block just means standing in front of someone so they don't knock over your quarterback. In hockey, that's not even a stat, unless you bump into someone who has the puck, in which case it's called a "hit." A block, in hockey parlance, is when you intentionally fall down on a rock-hard sheet of ice so that a small, heavy chunk of hard rubber which has just come out of a bucket of ice to make it harder will hit you somewhere between seventy to a hundred miles per hour.
Last year's defense-first strategy on the Capitals translated into over a hundred blocks from seven of their regular defensemen. John Carlson led the group with an amazing 160 blocks, throwing himself successfully in harm's way twice per game. The rookie standout was followed by constantly-improving giant Jeff Schultz at 138 and world-class youngster Karl Alzner at 132. These guys are all defensively sound players who should be expected to sacrifice their bodies to keep the other team from scoring.
Scott Hannan and John Erskine fit that mold too, and aren't too surprising on this list. However, Dennis Wideman and Mike Green are considered power-play specialists. The fact that they finished the year with 126 and 109 blocks, respectively, is a testimony that Boudreau really got the Caps to commit to a defense-first system. Green finished 89th in the league in the stat, despite that he played only 49 games.
Hannan's respectable 122 blocks will certainly be missed, but his replacement, Roman Hamrlik, blocked an incredible 192 shots last season, fourth in the league. Just the exchange of Hannan for Hamrlik through free agency this summer could give the Caps seventy more blocks, which would put them in second place last year in the league, with 1327. This would still be sixty behind the Islanders, but the Caps only had Dennis Wideman for less than half the season. Having Wideman's 126 block pace for even half the year would give them 63 more, for a league-leading 1390.
One might ask, though, how important is shot-blocking, really? Three of the six teams who finished ahead of Washington missed the playoffs. The Caps certainly didn't spend this offseason trying to be more like last year's Maple Leafs, Islanders and Thrashers/Jets. The answer lies in looking at last year's post-season numbers. In spite of their stalwart corps of defense-first defensemen, the Caps blocked the fewest playoff shots last year of any team who made it to the second round.
When the season was on the line, Detroit, Nashville and Philadelphia all blocked more rubber than the Caps. It's hard to say whether this low number was more of a cause or an effect of the sweep by the Tampa Bay Lightning, but it's easy to see that unfortunate injuries to Wideman and Green played a role in the Caps early demise last season. The Caps actually enjoyed a healthy advantage, even in the playoffs in their number of shots blocked per game over their fellow two-round teams, but trailed both Tampa Bay and San Jose, who each made it to the third round. Stanley Cup winner Boston and finalist Vancouver were both among the bottom three in shot blocking during the playoffs, ahead of only Phoenix, so blocking shots isn't everything, but because the playoffs are based on one team eliminating another, the winning team must have the ability to play different styles depending on their opponent.
Hopefully the addition of Hamrlik's durability and the likelihood that one or more of Wideman, Green and possibly even Tom Poti could be healthy for next year's playoffs can help the Caps focus on what they do best this Spring: putting their own shots behind opposing goalies.
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