Tuesday night the Capitals beat the Carolina Hurricanes by a score of 5-0 and extended their home win streak to 10 games. They continue to rack up even-strength goals at a ferocious pace, and on top of that they solved the Canes top-ranked 87.7 percent PK twice. One of those tallies was Alex Ovechkin passing Joe Sakic for 14th all-time in PP goals.
The superlatives and records keep on mounting. This was the Caps’ 10th shutout of the season and it was also their ninth straight home game where they scored five goals or more. Holtby is 12-0-0 over his last dozen games and tied the league lead in shutouts at seven. Not only that, but the Caps also won the battle of the underlying metrics, keeping the Canes to just 39 five-on-five shot attempts to their 50.
Key Stats
- The blueline was active in terms of shot attempts, and the pairing of Matt Niskanen and Dmitry Orlov lead the way with seven and five shot attempts, respectively. That ties Niskanen’s highest number of five-on-five shot attempts in any game this season. One-third of all five-on-five shot attempts originated from Niskanen, Orlov and Karl Alzner.
- Good things come in tens — with Lars Eller’s 10th goal of the season, the Caps now have 10 players with 10 or more goals. By the end of last season they only had eight.
- At this time last year the Caps had scored almost exactly the same number of goals, with 178 through 54 games to this year’s 180. The Caps are ten better on goals against, with just 114 allowed to last year’s 124 through 54 games.
Unsung Hero of the Game
Brooks Orpik had a standout game. He was a modest plus-three in shot attempts at five-on-five, but he was plus-six in scoring chances (eight to two in raw numbers). He also managed to be on the ice for all three even-strength Caps goals. To top it off he was credited with three shot blocks and two hits. Orlov also had a stellar game, and Tom Wilson continues to quietly improve.
Trend to Watch
In the previous numbers for the morning after we talked about how the Capitals were on a shooting and save percentage binge. After tonight this is even more true, although they continue to back up the numbers with rock-solid play.
Well, when you have an amazing shooting percentage and an amazing save percentage, you tend to also have a stellar goals-for percentage. The Caps’ goals-for percent (the share of all five-on-five goals that are in their favor) is currently on track to be the best that any team has posted, in any season, since 2007.
This chart shows where all NHL teams sit in goals-for and shot attempt percent in all seasons since 2007. The 2016-2017 Caps are a solid possession team, but are truly in a league of their own when it comes to outscoring the opposition.
Full Coverage of Caps vs Canes
Stats courtesy of Corsica.Hockey and NaturalStatTrick.
Headline photo by Patrick McDermott/NHLI.
