Caps survive cannon in Columbus: numbers for the morning after

February 7, 2018 8:55 am

The Washington Capitals escaped Columbus with a 3-2 victory thanks to a milestone goal from Nicklas Backstrom and the goaltending of Braden Holtby. The good guys avoided the final cannon shot, but unfortunately the entirety of the crowd in attendance was still deafened.

The Blue Jackets out-shot the Caps 39 to 25 and out-attempted the Caps at five-on-five 56 to 44.

Nicklas Backstrom‘s very late third period goal was the 200th marker of his career. Backstrom sits fifth all-time in franchise goals behind only Alex Ovechkin, Peter Bondra, Mike Gartner, and Mike Ridley.
One of Backstrom’s running mates on the night, Tom Wilson scored his seventh goal of the season, tying his former career high. It’s pretty safe to say that barring injury, Tom will be setting a bunch of new career highs this season, especially if he stays with this current line.
Speaking of that current line, they should never be separated for the remainder of this season. Tuesday night’s game was just another example of five-on-five domination from the trio of Ovechkin, Backstrom, and Wilson. Both even strength Capitals goals came from this line and the three also led all Capitals in shot attempt percentage, scoring chance for percentage, and high danger chance for percentage.
To delve even deeper into just how good that line was we just need to take a look at Ovechkin’s five-on-five individual numbers. The Caps captain earned another two assists, fired seven shots on net out of his ten attempts, had six individual scoring chances, and two individual high danger chances. Something about this line just clicks and a lot of it has to do with how good Alex Ovechkin has been playing this season.
Andre Burakovsky, without injury, playing less than seven minutes of the game at five-on-five is just a joke. All I have to say about that.
Braden Holtby stopped 37 pucks, which is a lot more pucks than he stopped in his last start. Great bounce back game from Holts, just need to figure out that whole Pittsburgh thing.