The Capitals started their first extended road trip of the season in style, downing the Vancouver Canucks 5-2 with an all around complete effort. Best sixty minutes from them so far on the young season.
The Caps out-shot the Nucks 33 to 24 and out-attempted them at five-on-five 38 to 29.
- Nicklas Backstrom recorded the 600th assist of his career on Alex Ovechkin‘s second goal of the night. Since Nicky debuted during the 2007-08 season, no player has recorded more assists in the NHL than him (601). Fittingly, he passed his countryman, Henrik Sedin (600) for that accomplishment in Vancouver against the Canucks.
- Backstrom is the 87th player of all time to reach 600 assists, first from his draft class (next closest is Claude Giroux with 471), and the second fastest (823 games) Swedish born player (Peter Forsberg-670 games) to achieve the feat.
Nicklas Backstrom has set up 52 different teammates on the road to 600 career assists, including 234 helpers on goals by Alex Ovechkin (39%). He has only set up two other players at least 40 times: T.J. Oshie (48) and Alexander Semin (40), per NHL Stats.
— CapitalsPR (@CapitalsPR) October 23, 2018
- Ovechkin’s second goal of the night came on the power play, which gave him sole possession of ninth place on the NHL’s all time power play goal list. He passed former Capital, Dino Ciccarelli with the 233rd powerful strike of his career.
- A ton of the positive play from this game was driven by the Caps second line of Backstrom, TJ Oshie, and Chandler Stephenson. Lets just pick out more numbers from Nicky’s great night to show you what I mean. With number 19 on the ice at five-on-five the Capitals owned 83.3-percent of the shot attempts, out scoring chanced the Canucks 12 to 0, and out high danger chanced them 6 to 0. That’s domination.
- What the domination from the second line covers up is that Devante Smith-Pelly still belongs absolutely nowhere near the top line or really even the top nine. DSP and his center Evgeny Kuznetsov both held minus-five shot attempt differentials and the line was generally ineffective together at even strength.
This looks nice. pic.twitter.com/5RvVByxwEo
— Chris Cerullo (@CJC_95) October 23, 2018
- The Capitals “won” the five-on-five stats battle in every period and when I say battle I’m talking your shot attempts, scoring chances, and high danger chances. That matches up with my general eye test observations from this game.
- John Carlson is aflame.
John Carlson is the 10th different blueliner in NHL history to post 5 multi-point games in his first 8 team GP of a season.
Bobby Orr (1969-70, 1971-72, 1973-74) and Denis Potvin (1974-75 and 1978-79) are the only ones to do so on multiple occasions. #NHLStats #WSHvsVAN pic.twitter.com/qLDonSfBhu
— NHL Public Relations (@PR_NHL) October 23, 2018
Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com, NaturalStatTrick.com, and Corsica.hockey.
Full RMNB Coverage of Caps at Canucks
Headline Photo: Jeff Vinnick
