The Washington Capitals sure left it late last night in Raleigh against the Carolina Hurricanes, but a win is a win. In their 4-3 victory the team scored two goals within the last 3:08 of the third period to sneak out into their bye week with two points.
The Hurricanes out-shot the Caps 39 to 27, but the five-on-five shot attempts were locked up at 45 apiece.
- Jay Beagle‘s buzzer beating goal to sink the Canes came with less than two seconds remaining in regulation. Another lesson to all you kids out there to #CrashTheNet. I’d be remiss to not also mention the phenomenal stick lift and immediate cross ice pass from Nicklas Backstrom to set the tally up.
- The story of the offensive dynamo that is Alex Ovechkin continued last night as he tallied his league-leading 28th goal of the season and added two assists, one coming on Beagle’s goal. Ovechkin played the most minutes of any forward and was the best Caps player on the ice all night for my money. His skating continues to be a strength of his this season and he is now only two assists shy of 500 total in his career as well as 14 goals shy of the big 600.
- Those two assists Ovechkin needed to reach 500 probably could have been recorded if he and Backstrom had a different running mate than Devante Smith-Pelly. This is a tune that I have been singing since DSP was put on the first line early in the season. I believe that DSP still deserves a jersey every night, his shot metrics last night were actually still very good (54.8 five-on-five shot attempt percentage), but he just doesn’t have the skill level to create for himself or to finish chances created by the Caps big guns.
- The other clutch goal that will be lost in the mayhem that was the final seconds, was scored by Brett Connolly. He now has ten goals in 36 games this season after scoring 15 goals in 66 games last season. General Manager Brian MacLellan deserves props for taking a chance on Connolly after the latter’s somewhat unsuccessful tenure in Boston.
- I thought the coaching staff did an awesome job handling five-on-five minutes doled out during the back half of a back to back while still getting the match ups that they wanted. Brooks Orpik got destroyed again when it comes to five-on-five shot attempt percentage (28.6 percent) and scoring chance for percentage (22.2 percent), but that impact was limited due to him only getting a little over 12 minutes of five-on-five ice time.
- Lars Eller now has a goal in four straight games and five overall in his last seven games.
- Another milestone was reached this season as John Carlson tallied his 300th career point on Ovechkin’s howitzer. He’s only the 24th player in franchise history to do that with the Caps and only the 7th defensemen.
- The Capitals are now 39-1-5 all time when Beagle scores a goal.
Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com, Hockeystats.ca, NaturalStatTrick.com, and Corsica.hockey.
Full RMNB Coverage of Caps at Hurricanes
Headline photo: Gregg Forwerck
