Don’t act like you forgot about Dre: numbers for the morning after

December 20, 2017 11:56 am

The Washington Capitals and Dallas Stars matched up in a game that will be remembered for Andre Burakovsky’s heroics. Lets take a look at what kind of numbers came out of this Caps 4-3 win over the Stars in overtime.

The Stars out-shot the Caps 36 to 28 and out-attempted them five-on-five 52 to 41.

Andre Burakovsky had a great night. The young forward finished with three points, including the first overtime game-winning goal of his career, his 40th goal of his career, and the fourth multi-goal game of his career. His strong board work to get the assist on Brett Connolly’s goal was fantastic and reminiscent of one Justin Williams. Way to be Dre.
The entire third line overall was great, Lars Eller especially. In limited five-on-five minutes due to a lot of special teams play, Eller had a 62.5 percent shot attempt percentage and a 66.7 percent scoring chance for percentage.
The line of Evgeny Kuznetsov, TJ Oshie, and Jakub Vrana had some major problems. They had the task of dealing with Tyler Seguin‘s line all night and they did not handle it well. The entire deficit that you see in the shot attempt chart is basically due to this match up. Not one of the three forwards got above 20 percent of the five-on-five shot attempts when they were on the ice.
The first line is becoming a bit machine-like, pumping out quality game after game. They had their typical dominance in possession and scoring chances, but Tom Wilson saw a whole lotta time in the penalty box. Some of that time could be seen as “good” time as he handled Antoine Roussel, but the Caps are a better team when Wilson is on the ice. He needs to stay on the ice. It’s that simple.
I’ve been encouraging the Caps to give Christian Djoos some harder minutes. They did just that as Djoos had the worst zone start percentage (33.3 percent) on the team and his numbers reflected that (29.2 shot attempt percentage). I’m not too worried, because if you were a Caps defensemen not named Matt Niskanen or Dmitry Orlov your numbers took a hit in this one.