The Washington Capitals followed up their encouraging win in San Jose with an absolute stinker against the Anaheim Ducks only days later. The Caps fell 5-2 to the Ducks and get an immediate chance to bounce back tonight in Los Angeles.

The Ducks out-shot the Caps 39 to 25.

• Alex Ovechkin scored his 40th goal of the season and this is the tenth time in his career that he’s achieved that feat. Only three other players in NHL history have recorded that many 40-goal seasons. They are Marcel Dionne (10), Mario Lemieux (10), and Wayne Gretzky (12). At least Ovi is still awesome.
• The Caps got out-played at five-on-five in all three periods of this game. Reminder that as Peter said last night in the recap, the Ducks just fired their coach, lost a potential Hart Trophy contending goaltender in John Gibson to injury, and are basement dwellers in the Western Conference.
• In further bad news, the Caps lost TJ Oshie to an upper-body injury in the second period and he did not return. By all reports it does not seem to be a concussion or long term injury, but still scary nonetheless.

With an assist on Ovechkin's goal, John Carlson is now one assist shy of 300 career assists, and he can become the third defenseman in franchise history to record 300 assists (Calle Johansson: 361 assists; Scott Stevens: 331 assists).

— CapitalsPR (@CapitalsPR) February 18, 2019

• There are so many bad games numbers wise from individual players that I’m having trouble picking a couple to highlight. John Carlson, Matt Niskanen, Dmitry Orlov, Michal Kempny, Evgeny Kuznetsov, the entire fourth line, etc.
• To end this bad boy with a bit of a positive swing, the Hershey Bears are amongst a 15-game point streak in which they have outright won 14 of those games. Holy baloney.

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

Full RMNB Coverage of Caps at Ducks

Headline photo: Debora Robinson