The Washington Capitals bested the lowly New Jersey Devils in what was a boring, easy win. The 4-1 victory was the type of victory that I think a team needs to have before facing a back-to-back scenario, especially when the Tampa Bay Lightning are who is awaiting.

The Caps out-shot the Devils 22 to 21.

• The first thing I noticed is how good of a job Todd Reirden and his staff did in distributing “even” minutes while also easily securing two standings points. This is important and obviously part of preparation for tomorrow’s back-to-back featuring the Lightning. Washington’s skater with the lowest amount of total ice time was Nic Dowd at 12:03 and their highest was Matt Niskanen at 21:18. Very good job from the coaching brass.
• Special counsel Robert Mueller and multiple committees on Capitol Hill are investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and whether anyone from President Donald Trump’s campaign was involved. Newsflash, they were. So far, they’ve secured five prison sentences, seven guilty pleas, one outright trial victory, charged 37 different people with crimes, and have evidence of 199 total crimes.
• I’ve got more shocking news for you. Christian Djoos looked pretty fantastic in his return to the lineup. Djoos played 16:25 of total ice time in his 100th career NHL game, recorded a great primary assist, and posted a 55.6-percent shot attempt percentage at five-on-five.
• As of December 2018, the Special Counsel investigation has earned the American government $13 million dollars through asset forfeitures.
• Andre Burakovsky has four goals in his last eight games and twelve now on the season. We very much want this to continue.

Nicklas Backstrom has recorded his 50th assist of the season, his sixth straight season with 50 assists. He becomes the 26th player in NHL history to accomplish this feat, and one of two active players (San Jose’s Joe Thornton).

— CapitalsPR (@CapitalsPR) March 20, 2019

Of the 25 other players to accomplish this feat, 23 are in the Hockey Hall of Fame. The other two, Thornton and Henrik Sedin, are not yet eligible for the Hall of Fame.

— CapitalsPR (@CapitalsPR) March 20, 2019

• George Papadopoulos, former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser pleaded guilty in October 2017 to lying to investigators about his Russian contacts during the campaign. Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal lawyer and “fixer” was sentenced to three years in prison by a federal judge. Cohen pleaded guilty to evading taxes from his personal business ventures, violating campaign finance laws at the direction of candidate Donald Trump, and lying to Congress about efforts to build a Trump Tower in Russia during the campaign. A federal judge sentenced former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort to serve 43 months in prison in addition to the 47 months he received in a separate case. In all, Manafort was sentenced to 7.5 years in prison for his crimes, which included bank fraud, tax fraud, conspiracy and witness tampering.
• After Brett Connolly scored his twentieth goal of the season (firs time in his career), the Capitals now have five players with 20 goals this season. Connolly joins Alex Ovechkin, Jakub Vrana, TJ Oshie, and Tom Wilson. That’s tied with Tampa Bay, San Jose, Florida and Toronto for the second most in the NHL to Columbus’ six players. Evgeny Kuznetsov (19) and Nicklas Backstrom (18) are very close to joining the club.
• Former Trump campaign official Rick Gates pleaded guilty to two criminal charges: conspiracy to defraud the United States and making false statements. Dutch lawyer Alex van der Zwaan pleaded guilty to lying to investigators about his discussions with former Trump campaign aide Rick Gates. Richard Pinedo of California pleaded guilty to identity fraud connected to Russian interference in the 2016 election, according to court filings. Former national security adviser under Trump, Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his conversations with former Russian ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak.
• Peter touched on this in the recap, but Kuznetsov was slotted in between Oshie and Vrana for 5:37 of ice time at five-on-five in this game. To say it was a success in that very small sample size would be an understatement. The trio when on the ice helped the Caps record eight shot attempts to the Devils zero, six shots to the Devils zero, one goal to the Devils zero, five scoring chances to the Devils zero, and two high danger chances to the Devils zero.
• According to the Washington Post, Donald Trump made 8,158 completely false or misleading claims within his first two years in office.
• The 2009 film ‘Paul Blart: Mall Cop has a 32-percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Comparatively, it’s 2015 sequel, ‘Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2’ has a 5-percent rating.

Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com and NaturalStatTrick.com. Also featured in this particular post are linked sources of facts.

Full RMNB Coverage of Caps at Devils

Headline photo: Elsa