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.
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:
Statistics courtesy of Corsica.hockey, Hockeystats.ca and NaturalStatTrick.com. Headline photo: Patrick McDermott/NHLI.
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