The Caps playoff seed has been set and they are the Metropolitan Division winners, but they still have a couple games left in this year’s campaign. They headed to St. Louis for their last road fixture of the regular season and came away with a 4-2 victory.
Said victory allowed the Colorado Avalanche to hold onto the last Wild Card spot in the Western Conference and put the flailing Blues further into desperation mode.
The Blues out-shot the Caps 36 to 34 and out-attempted them at five-on-five 62 to 48.
- Nicklas Backstrom scored the Caps first goal of the night and his 20th on the season. Backstrom has now scored at least 20 goals in three-straight seasons.
- Alex Ovechkin scored his league leading 46th goal this season into an empty net late in regulation. That was Ovechkin’s 29th career empty net goal which places him tied for 5th in NHL history in that category with Eric Staal. Jarome Iginla (32), Mario Lemieux (33), Marian Hossa (40), and Wayne Gretzky (56) are the names ahead of him on that list.
- The Caps are on a bit of a road tear right now, winning five-straight away from Capital One Arena.
- Braden Holtby was pretty fantastic playing in the back half of a back to back. Holtby made 34 stops on 36 shots, including an absolute beauty on Jaden Schwartz.
- Time to pat myself on the back:
Two years in a row getting the final two teams right and now 1/2 on picking the champion. *Brushes shoulder* pic.twitter.com/ujUAFtapbx
— Chris Cerullo (@CJC_95) April 3, 2018
Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com, Hockeystats.ca, NaturalStatTrick.com, and Corsica.hockey.
Full RMNB Coverage of Caps at Blues
Headline Photo: Dilip Vishwanat
