First line dominance: numbers for the morning after

February 16, 2018 6:27 am

The Washington Capitals traveled to the land of 10,000 lakes to play the Western Conference’s Minnesota Wild in the second game of the Caps four game road trip. The good guys would prevail 5-2 over the Wild, majorly on the back of a stellar night from their first line forwards.

The Wild out-shot the Caps 34 to 27 and out-attempted them at five-on-five 46 to 39.

Starting with the main man of that first line, Alex Ovechkin had himself quite the night. The Caps captain scored once and got set up credit on three other goals for a four point night. One of those three assists was his 1,100th career point and his goal was his 34th of the season, which means he has now outscored his last season and it’s only February 16. Love you, #8.
The other wing on the first line, Tom Wilson also lit the scoreboard up. With his two goals and one assist, Wilson has now set career highs in both goals (9) and points (26) in a single season. In the 20 games this season in which Wilson has played the entire 60 minutes with Ovechkin and Nicklas Backstrom (two points in his own right Thursday night), he has 6 goals and 14 points overall. That’s a 57 point pace over 82 games. Never, ever, ever split these three up.
Andre Burakovsky scored in his second straight game on a coast to coast effort and set up Ovechkin’s marker as well. Hopefully this spurs a hot streak from Dre and he doesn’t leave the lineup again for the rest of this year.
This game marked the end of Evgeny Kuznetsov‘s eight game point and assist streak. His line was also probably the poorest of the bunch for the Caps. Not one of the trio saw above 40 percent of the shot attempts go in their favor when they were on the ice five-on-five. I’d bet that Jakub Vrana could be seeing more nacho duty in this next game as Alex Chiasson will get a jersey during the Caps dad’s trip.
Philipp Grubauer was pretty sensational, making 32 stops. His first goal against saw him make three separate saves before Nino Niederreiter could poke home the puck on the fourth effort and the his second goal against was a fluke deflection off of Dmitry Orlov. This guy will start somewhere in the NHL eventually.
Taylor Chorney filled in on the blueline for Madison Bowey and actually had a good game next to Brooks Orpik. The coaching staff protected him with the cushiest zone starts among Caps defensemen, 66.7 percent coming in the offensive zone, but he rewarded that decision with a good night. In his 13:15 of ice time five-on-five, Chorney led the Caps in shot attempt percentage (64.3 percent) and scoring chance for percentage (75 percent).
Former Cap, current Hershey Bear, Chris Bourque had two assists on two Ryan Donato goals in Team USA’s 2-1 win over Team Slovakia in a group stage game at the Olympics.