Beaten and bruised: numbers for the morning after

November 15, 2018 7:26 am

Wednesday night, the Washington Capitals were looking to take both games of their western back-to-back, but in a twist they’d have to do it without Braden Holtby. Without their star netminder and with a couple other health issues, the beat up Caps fell 3-1.

The Caps out-shot the Jets 28 to 24, but were out-attempted at five-on-five 46 to 36.

The Caps started this game banged up with the absence of Braden Holtby and Michal Kempny and things only got worse when Brandon Tanev elbowed Evgeny Kuznetsov in the head and Kuzya did not return to action. The Caps say he was held out on a precautionary basis. The start of this four game road trip has not begun ideally from a team health perspective.
The Caps power play has gone through a bit of a slump of late. They’ve now fallen to the fourth best unit in the league (28.8-percent) after leading all teams for the initial 15 or so games this season. This is a little concerning as it was their man advantage that was carrying them through a very rough stretch of five-on-five play.
Jakub Vrana was the good guys’ only goal scorer on the evening and his now five goals in 18 games puts him on a pace to top 20 goals for the full year. Now only if he could slip Andre Burakovsky some of that ability to regularly find the back of the net.
I think both Tanev, for his hit on Kuznetsov, and Josh Morrissey, for his assault of TJ Oshie, should be receiving calls from the NHL’s Department of Player Safety. Whether they face actual consequences is up to Parros and company, but in my opinion at least Tanev should be seeing some unplanned time off.
Alex Ovechkin is now scoreless in four straight games, the longest drought of his season thus far. What a scrub.