The Capitals dominated the St. Louis Blues in a memorable 4-3 victory last night, on the eve of America’s annual food-worshipping holiday. The star of the show was Alex Ovechkin, who netted the 16th hat trick of his career. Also featured was a mostly Russian scoresheet and children dressed as turkeys.
Despite the one-goal margin, this game was never in doubt (okay, maybe the last 30 seconds had us worried). The Caps out-attempted the Blues 35 to 24 at five-on-five, and 26-13 through the first two periods. Despite a late surge on the man advantage, the Blues never had much going at even strength.
The Caps played well as a team last night, but the highlight was the dominance of the top line, especially Ovechkin. He ended the night plus 11 in five on five shot attempts, and plus 16 overall. The top line crushed their main matchup of Alex Pietrangelo and Jay Bouwmeester, with Ovi seeing 14 shots towards their net with only two headed back towards Braden Holtby. Encouraging stuff from Ovi, who recently has had us a bit worried.
- Let’s not forget Evgeny Kuznetsov, who saw seven scoring chances for and only two against. He also saw a 15 to 6 five-on-five shot differential, and was rewarded with a goal on a masterful Dmitry Orlov feed. It was the young star’s best game of the season.
- The top line achieved their dominance with seven starts in the defensive zone and only two in the offensive zone. Within individual games zone starts matter, it’s hard to overstate how good the top line was in spite of tough deployments.
- Matt Niskanen and Karl Alzner led the team in even strength ice time at 16 and 17 minutes, respectively. They saw two goals against, but overall have allowed the lowest rate of five-on-five goals against of any Caps pairing. They also have the highest goals for percent at 64.7, despite having the lowest possession of any Caps pairing at 53.3 percent.
After a good-but-not-great first 19 games, lets take stock of some Capitals numbers that we can be thankful for and that show they are still on track:
- According to mangameslost.com the Capitals have lost the fewest games to injury of any team. This will increase slightly with TJ Oshie’s injury, but this club has still been incredibly lucky.
- The Caps’ possession has stabilized and was the sixth best over the last five games at 54.3 percent. They currently sit at third in the league with a 53.8 percent, which is a strong predictor of future success.
- Braden Holtby is fifth in five-on-five save percentage with a .948, way up from the .931 he finished last year with. This is the third-highest 14-game stretch in his career, with the highest coming last December. He won’t sustain this pace all season, but it’s never a bad thing when Holtby is sharp.
- The Caps are shooting at 8.4 percent, which is well within reason. With possession, ice time, goaltending and shooting percentage nothing the Capitals are doing screams “unsustainable.”
- Last but not least: 982 points, 537 goals, 199 powerplay goals, and 16 hat tricks, all with the Capitals. Alex Ovechkin is still one of the greatest players of all time and we should be thankful for him.
Statistics courtesy of Corsica.hockey, Hockeystats.ca and NaturalStatTrick.com. Headline photo: Patrick McDermott/NHLI.
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