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Was that a real game: numbers for the morning after

By Chris Cerullo

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February 27, 2019 7:43 am

The Washington Capitals will not want to talk about the first ten minutes of their game against the Ottawa Senators, but the latter fifty where they scored seven unanswered goals to win the game 7-2? That’s what we like to see.

The Caps out-shot the Sens 37 to 23.

  • First, lets point out the obvious here. The Ottawa Senators have been completely gutted and are in for what looks to be a really painful rebuild. Not getting a shot on goal on them for an entire ten minutes is disgraceful, but I won’t harp on that any further. The Caps did what good teams in the NHL should do and pulverized the Sens for the remaining fifty minutes and wasn’t that much better? Now with that and the win over the Rangers comes the obvious and that obvious is that both of those teams suck, but hey the Caps can only beat who is in front of them. I said “a step in the right direction” after the Rangers win and this is another, lets just see them do this against a playoff team.
  • Every forward within the Capitals top-nine recorded at least one point. That leaves the fourth line as the odd men out, but I thought they were excellent once again anyway. Carl Hagelin really does provide an extra jolt to that trio and I think his first goal as a Cap is probably just around the corner.
  • Shoutout to the first line who I have complained about with regularity of late. Evgeny Kuznetsov and his running mates pitched a five-on-five high danger chance shutout, recording six in the Caps favor while doing so.

  • Lets wrap up all the milestone-ish talk in one bullet. Tom Wilson scored his career high 18th goal of the season and his third goal in the last four games. Ovi recorded two assists in the game, extending his point streak to seven games (six goals, four assists). John Carlson scored his 87th career goal, moving him past Larry Murphy for sixth all time in franchise goals by a defenseman. Brooks Orpik is now on a two game assist streak. TJ Oshie now has four two-goal games this season and this one made him the second Caps player to reach the 20 mark this year. Nicklas Backstrom‘s 146th career multi-assist game gives him the second most of those games since he entered the league (Sidney Crosby, 151 games). Brett Connolly scored his career high 16th goal of the season and his third goal in the last five games. Andre Burakovsky recorded an assist on Connolly’s goal, giving him points in three straight games. I think that’s it, phew.
  • The home team’s best period was the second where they out-attempted the Sens 30 to 12, out-shot them 17 to 5, out-scoring chanced them 18 to 6, out-high danger chanced them 8 to 1, and out-scored them 4 to 0.
  • The Caps have scored 13 goals in their last two games and none of them have come from Alex Ovechkin. Ovi, we really want sixty this season so if you could just start scoring two goals a game, that’d be best for the entire world.

Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com and NaturalStatTrick.com.

Full RMNB Coverage of Caps vs Senators

Headline photo: Patrick Smith

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