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‘I liked us’: numbers for the morning after

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“I liked us” is a quote that Mike Babcock gave to the media after his Leafs lost to the Caps on Saturday night in the crazy Alex Ovechkin hat trick game. I know this because I watched Steve Dangle’s LFR that he put out the next day. Steve has a term he likes to use called an “honest loss.”

I think it describes this Capitals 5-2 loss to the Los Angeles Kings well. It was a honest loss in a game where “I liked us”. The Caps weren’t bad, the Kings weren’t exactly “better”, you just can’t win all 82 games in a season.

The Capitals out-shot the Kings 29 to 27 and out-attempted them five-on-five 52 to 45.

  • Evgeny Kuznetsov had one of the best games he has ever played in a Washington Capitals jersey. It’s nuts to me that he only came out of this game with two points, which both came via the goal variety. Kuzy now has eight goals on the season, a mark that took him until January 26 of last season to reach. When Kuzy was out on the ice five-on-five the Caps had 26 shot attempts for and only five against (80.8 percent). Kuzy was also on the ice for ten Capitals scoring chances to the Kings four, as well as five high danger chances for the Capitals to the Kings zero.

  • The two guys along for the Kuznetsov ride weren’t too shabby themselves. Jakub Vrana and TJ Oshie both came out the game with above 80 percent of the shot attempts when they were on the ice five-on-five and Vrana actually led the Caps in shot attempt differential (plus-24), scoring chance differential (plus-9), and high danger chance differential (plus-6). The defensemen that this trio played the most with at five-on-five were Christian Djoos (around eight minutes) and John Carlson (around seven minutes). That’s the pairing that they should be deployed with going forward.
  • Speaking of my boy Djoos, he is back and is still good at hockey. The young Swedish defenseman played the second least amount of minutes five-on-five, but hopefully that’s just the Caps easing him back into action after his injury. I think we saw him get more ice time as the game neared it’s end which is a good sign, but an even better sign is that a lot of those minutes (8:07) were with Carlson. Djoos was his typical self that we’ve seen this season, coming out of the game with a plus-nine shot attempt differential, best among all Caps defensemen.

  • The Caps were a little unlucky in this one to not scrape by with at least a point. Those two goals that the Kings scored in only nine seconds really turned the game on its head. They struck on some opportunistic, rush counter-attacks and then somewhat turtled to maintain their advantage in score.

  • This is a little nitpicky, but I don’t think the Caps bottom six is configured to max efficiency. I’m sure much will be discussed about the waiving of Nathan Walker, but even when we disregard that, I still think they’re getting it wrong. If I had it my way, Chandler Stephenson and Tyler Graovac would switch places on the third and fourth lines. The two lines from Thursday night were easily the worst possession lines the Caps had and I think that would be the easy fix.

Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com, Hockeystats.ca, NaturalStatTrick.com, and Corsica.hockey.

Full RMNB Coverage of Caps vs Kings

Headline photo: Patrick McDermott

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