Powerful Pittsburgh power play dooms Caps: numbers for the morning after

February 3, 2018 8:43 am

Friday night, the Washington Capitals took a rough 7-4 beating at the hands of their regular nemesis, the Pittsburgh Penguins. It was not a good night at PPG Paints Arena.

The Pens out-shot the Caps 39 to 33 and out-attempted them at five-on-five 49 to 46.

Even though the Capitals lost big and had a lot of their team weaknesses exposed in a large way, this game was a fun watch. Fast pace, high event hockey is exciting and the Caps went toe to toe with probably the fastest team in the league, bar the Tampa Bay Lighting. At five-on-five the Capitals actually outscored the Pens four to three, it was the Pens lethal power play that put them over the line.
Speaking of said Pittsburgh power play, they have now scored three goals in two of the three games that these two teams have played this season. The Caps penalty kill has been mediocre at best all year and it definitely looks like there needs to be some changes to it when they play the Pens because it’s been figured out.
Alex Ovechkin was the best individual player on the ice for my money, it’s just unfortunate that the majority of the rest of his teammates didn’t follow his example. The Caps captain scored twice (117th career multi-goal game), had the best five-on-five shot attempt percentage on the team (58.3 percent), and added a secondary assist on Evgeny Kuznetsov‘s goal.
One match up that the Pens seemingly looked to exploit whenever possible with their last change was getting Sidney Crosby‘s line out against Brooks Orpik and Madison Bowey. Just isolating Sid’s numbers against Orpik shows how lucky the Capitals were not to concede when this group of players was on the ice. In less than five minutes of five-on-five play against Orpik, Crosby’s grouping fired 10 shot attempts to the Caps 1, 6 scoring chances to the Caps 0, and 3 high danger chances to the Caps 0.
The difference in ability between these two teams bottom-six forwards was never more apparent than in this game. Not one of the Capitals top six forwards had below a 50 percent five-on-five shot attempt percentage, but all of their bottom six forwards did.
Christian Djoos will want to forget his horrible turnover leading to Carl Hagelin‘s goal in the first period, but other than that he had another pretty great game. He’s still getting heavily sheltered minutes, but led all Caps defensemen in five-on-five shot attempt percentage (57.1 percent), scoring chance for percentage (56.3 percent), and high danger chance for percentage (85.7).