The Washington Capitals suffered bigly at the hands of the Nashville Predators on Tuesday night as their midseason struggles continue to fester. The Preds 7-2 win over a tired, flustered group of Caps is just the beginning of a rough stretch of games for our heroes.
The Preds out-shot the Caps 29 to 28 and out-attempted them at five-on-five 47 to 43.
- Tom Wilson beat the piss out of Austin Watson in a fight and that’s where the positives from this game end.
- The Caps loss and the Blue Jackets win means the Caps are now second in the Metro Division based on ROW (regulation wins plus overtime wins). This is literally the greatest moment in Columbus Blue Jackets history.
- Pheonix Copley wasn’t great in this game. The Caps were never winning this one, but they weren’t seven goals against bad. They even managed to match the Predators in terms of high danger chances at five-on-five with eleven apiece. I honestly don’t really care about that though because ya know they lost 7-2 and you don’t get any extra standings points for kinda, sorta getting unlucky to lose by five goals.
- The rest of the schedule this year for the Caps is not kind to them. December was a very, very easy month and it’s going to get a whole lot bumpier from here on. That fact combined with the Caps very high team shooting percentage and a maybe not 100-percent Braden Holtby means we could be in for a lot more trying times in Caps fandom.
- Who else misses Christian Djoos?
- I think this team needs a jolt in the arm from the trade market and hopefully Brian MacLellan can fleece Peter Chiarelli for all of the good players the Oilers have left. Just not getting enough from a lot of highly paid forwards on this team, this year.
Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com, NaturalStatTrick.com, and Corsica.hockey.
Full RMNB Coverage of Caps at Predators
Headline photo: John Russell
