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Copley crackdown: numbers for the morning after

By Chris Cerullo

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December 23, 2018 6:59 am

The Washington Capitals got a spotless performance from their rookie netminder and beat up on the woeful Ottawa Senators to go into the Christmas break on a winning streak. The Capitals got goals from all over their lineup on the way to a 4-0 victory in Canada’s capital city.

The Sens out-shot the Caps 35 to 33 and out-attempted them at five-on-five 60 to 46.

  • As said in the opener, goaltender Pheonix Copley recorded his first career NHL shutout as he stopped all 35 Senators shots fired at his cage. Pheonix is the 28th different goaltender in franchise history to record a shutout. Who can name the other 27 without cheating? No one.
  • Congratulations are in order for Tyler Lewington as he made his NHL debut last night! The seventh round draft pick from 2013 did not look out of place at all to me. He was the benefit of heavily sheltered zone starts (87.5-percent offensive zone starts) and the Senators are very bad, but it’s still an NHL debut that he should be proud of.

  • Brett Connolly now has 22 points in 35 games this season and is on pace to set new career highs in goals and points. I think many forget that Conno only just turned 26 years old last summer so there’s probably still more room to grow for him as a player. He’s on quite the roll right now with nine points in his last ten games.
  • Dmitry Orlov played in his 400th NHL game with the Capitals, becoming only the 14th defenseman in franchise history to do so.

  • This was only the sixth game that Evgeny Kuznetsov has played this season where he has not recorded at least one point. Among players with at least twenty games played this season, only Connor McDavid (five) has fewer games without at least one point.
  • It may be that I was paying more attention to him than others, but I think Andre Burakovsky was one of the Caps best players in this game. He had the puck on a string, entered the Senators zone with his elite speed multiple times, got robbed of probably two goals, made an effort to get to the front of the net, and probably most importantly was looking to get the puck on net himself whenever he could. In my opinion, great response so far from number 65 in the two games he has been back.

Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com, NaturalStatTrick.com, and Corsica.hockey.

Full RMNB Coverage of Caps at Senators

Headline photo: Andre Ringuette

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