The Capitals and Maple Leafs met for the first time in the 2018-19 season and the first fixture went Toronto’s way as they took home a 4-2 victory over the Caps at Capital One Arena on Saturday night.
The Maple Leafs out-shot the Caps 28 to 27 and out-attempted them at five-on-five 48 to 44.
- Evgeny Kuznetsov has become the best player on the Washington Capitals. Add another goal and another assist to his season tally. He has 79 points in his last 59 games played (including playoffs), which is a 110 point pace over a full 82-game season.
- The second line of Nicklas Backstrom, TJ Oshie, and Jakub Vrana took exactly zero offensive zone faceoffs at five-on-five. All 11 of their draws came either in neutral or in the defensive zone and they still were the only Caps line to be a net-positive when it came to driving play in the right direction. Vrana in particular saw 75-percent of the shot attempts, 92.9-percent of the scoring chances, and 75-percent of the high danger chances go in the Caps favor when he was on the ice at evens.
- Andre Burakovsky is struggling. He finished with a team low 31.6-percent five-on-five shot attempt percentage and looks genuinely like the least effective Caps forward out there at the moment. I don’t know the solution.
- The first five games the Caps played this season (2-2-1) were all against playoff teams from last season. Their next eight games are all against teams who missed out on the big dance completely.
- DC United have come all the way back from the dead and are now sitting one point above the Montreal Impact for the last playoff spot in the east and they have a game in hand still. Vamos.
Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com, NaturalStatTrick.com, and Corsica.hockey.
Full RMNB Coverage of Caps vs Maple Leafs
Headline Photo: Patrick McDermott
