Caps score six times and beat the Red Wings: numbers for the morning after

February 10, 2017 9:02 am

Thursday evening started with a large dose of heartwarming when Fatima Al Ali, the Caps’ guest from the UAE, dropped the puck for the opening faceoff and took one of the best selfies of all time. It ended with the Capitals beating the Detroit Red Wings by a score of 6-3, scoring five or more goals at home for the tenth time in a row. Time is a flat circle.

This win came with the rarest of stats — Alex Ovechkin did not have a single shot on goal. This is the first time the Caps’ captain has been held shotless in 315 games. That’s 35 percent of his career. Overall, the Caps played a particularly deadly brand of hockey, outshooting the Wings 47 shot attempts to 29 at five-on-five and beating them resoundingly in scoring chances, 29 to 16.

Key Stats

The Caps’ usual second line ended up with the most five-on-five minutes, at almost 13. They were a plus-seven in shot attempts but were on for a goal against. Overall the ice time was distributed almost evenly across what would normally be lines one, two, and four. Much of that had to do with line shuffling after Andre Burakovsky left the game due to injury, on his birthday no less. Sadly, he’ll be out for a little while.
We mentioned that the Caps were particularly potent in terms of scoring chances, and indeed Thursday night they tied their third-best scoring chance differential of the season at plus-13. Their best came on December 29 when they out-chanced the New Jersey Devils 32 to 11 at five-on-five.
Brett Connolly scored yet again for his 12th of the season, tying his career high. Recently, we wrote about how Connolly’s play since early January has been a revelation, with him scoring goals at the highest rate on the entire team. Well, last night certainly continues that trend, and he was also a plus-seven in shot attempts.

Unsung Hero of the Game

The entire fourth line. Cheating a bit here, but the fourth line had a minor watershed moment Thursday. They skated almost 12 minutes together (second most used trio on the team), and weren’t on for a goal against. With Burakovsky out, Wilson stepped up to play 15:52 at five-on-five — his second most ice time of the season. A battle-hardened shift by them also led to sustained pressure, a line change, and eventually a John Carlson goal. With the season dragging on, the more ice time the lower lines can manage the more rest the big guns will get.

Trend to Watch

Back in early December, we lamented that the Capitals needed more goal scoring from their depth players. At the time, more than two-thirds of Caps goals were scored by the top six skaters (by ice time). That trend has certainly changed. Prior to December 3, the Caps saw 68 percent of their goals scored by the top-six, and since then that number has dropped significantly to 59 percent. This bodes well for any future matchups.