Goals galore: numbers for the morning after

March 25, 2018 6:51 am

The Washington Capitals downed the Montreal Canadiens 6-4 in a game where offense was king and defense was forgotten for large stretches of the action.

The Caps out-shot the Canadiens 30 to 21 and out-attempted them at five-on-five 43 to 36.

This win was the 200th of Barry Trotz‘ tenure with the Capitals. With two more wins in the remaining seven games the Capitals play this year, he will pass Bruce Boudreau‘s (201) win total.
Nicklas Backstrom recorded four assists in one game for the 11th time in his career (the most among active NHL players) and it also was the 20th game of his career with at least four points.
Backstrom also tied Mike Gartner for the second most 60-point seasons in Capitals history. Alex Ovechkin is obviously the career leader in that category. That also ties Backstrom with Nicklas Lidstrom, Daniel Sedin, and Henrik Zetterberg for the 3rd most such seasons in NHL history by a Swedish-born player.
The Caps took advantage of the Habs very weak penalty kill (second last in league) scoring two power play goals. The Habs have now given up an NHL-high 62 power play goals this season.
I thought the second line of Backstrom, TJ Oshie, and Andre Burakovsky was utterly dominant on the night and that is backed up by the numbers. You’ve already heard enough about Backstrom, Burakovsky had the team high shot attempt percentage at five-on-five (70.8 percent), and Oshie scored his 17th goal of the season.
Tom Wilson added another two goals to his growing total bringing him to 13 goals and 33 points on the season. What an integral player he has been this year.