Scoreless no more: numbers for the morning after

February 1, 2018 10:18 am

Wednesday night, the Washington Capitals topped their Metro-Division rival Philadelphia Flyers 5-3 in a game that saw a few important forwards breakout of some lengthy scoring slumps and Michal Neuvirth chased from the Philly net.

The Flyers out-shot the Caps 30 to 25, but the five-on-five shot attempts were locked up at 43 apiece.

TJ Oshie‘s power play goal was his first marker since December 22 against the Coyotes. Prior to scoring on Wednesday night, he had one goal in 22 games. I seem to remember some sort of worry about shooting percentage and regression. Oh well, cant put my finger on it. Let’s hope TJ can get on a roll now.
Andre Burakovsky‘s goal was his first since a two goal effort against the Stars on December 19. Burakovsky now has four goals and ten points on the season. That is not even close to what many thought he was capable of producing this season. The Caps, the world, and my general sanity need a big second half from the young Swede.
The Great Eight, Alex Ovechkin has scored on 127 different goalies during his career. Eight of those goalies are former Capitals, but there is one former Capital that Ovi has yet to best. That goaltender is Michal Neuvirth and I think we can conclude the only reason that Neuvy was pulled was to avoid becoming Ovi’s ninth former teammate victim. Stick taps to Tarik El-Bashir for digging that one up.
It was really great to see Evgeny Kuznetsov flying around and looking healthy after that brief groin injury scare. His first line was dinged for two goals at even strength, but they did control over 60 percent of the five-on-five shot attempts and scoring chances.
The first 545:23 minutes of Chandler Stephenson‘s career produced a total of two NHL goals. The next 47 seconds also produced two NHL goals. Hockey is weird.
It’s probably a miracle that the 4th line actually ended up plus-one at even strength. They were heavily out-attempted (~15 percent of the five-on-five shot attempts) and out-chanced (~22 percent of the scoring chances) when they were on the ice. A lot of that can be contributed to the fact that they got a grand total of one offensive zone start.