The Washington Capitals once again took the league’s best Tampa Bay Lightning to the brink, but again could not capture the full two points for a victory. The team, in their 5-4 overtime loss, showed that they can and will play with those guys for sure.
The Caps out-shot the Lightning 58 to 28.
- I am more than a little devastated about the Michal Kempny situation. It’s looking likely that his “lower body injury” is a serious one and will probably keep him out for weeks, not days. Not only is Kemper one of my favorite defensemen in the NHL, I feel like he’s been the Caps most consistently good defenseman this season (other than his penalty problem which I do not mean to minimize). The player that injured Kempny, Cedric Paquette, is probably one of the lesser known dirtier players in the league and I feel like that was on full display in this game. Take Brad Marchand and strip 90-percent of his talent and hockey playing ability and you’ll be left with Paquette. Like Marchand, Paquette will likely duck any type of “answering the hockey code” in the final matchup these two teams have at the end of March.
- Not a good play from Alex Ovechkin in any sense during that final overtime shift, but Dmitry Orlov, buddy. What in the Sam Hill are you doing on that Victor Hedman goal? He ended up covering, *checks notes*, I guess one of Holtby’s posts and the side of the net? Play the shooter in three-on-three there every single time.
- The main highlight of this game from a Caps POV for me was the play of the third line. Lars Eller, Carl Hagelin, and Brett Connolly as a trio at five-on-five posted a 92.3-percent shot attempt for percentage, a 83.3-percent scoring chance for percentage, a 75-percent high danger chance for percentage, out-shot the Lightning eleven to zero, and out-scored them two to zero.
- Evgeny Kuznetsov thought this was maybe his “best game ever”. I disagree because he was still a complete mess defensively at even strength (also went 5-10 in the faceoff circle), but it’s hard to argue that he didn’t put a big stamp on this game on the offensive side of things. Kuzy scored his 100th career goal to send this one to overtime, fired nine shots on net, attempted twelve shots in total, had ten individual scoring chances, and four individual high danger chances.
The Capitals' 58 shots tonight mark a new season high.
— CapitalsPR (@CapitalsPR) March 21, 2019
- TJ Oshie‘s goal to tie the game at three was his 200th career point as a member of the Capitals and his next goal will be his 100th as a Cap.
- The Caps went 1-for-6 on their power play and the Lightning went 3-for-3 on theirs. There’s your game right there. The Lightning got a lot of their success on the man advantage against the Caps in the playoffs last season. It’s vital the Caps stay out of the box as much as possible against them.
- Andrei Vasilevskiy won this game for Tampa, posting 54 saves on 58 shots. There’s no question that the kid’s a Vezina deserving monster, but I also think he’s shown that he’s beatable. No goalie is ever “comfortable” with a lot of traffic in his grill, but I think some look more at ease than others. For example, Braden Holtby, Carey Price, Matt Murray, and Sergei Bobrovsky are goaltenders that I think deal with traffic better than others. Vasilevskiy fits in another group with guys like Marc-Andre Fleury, Martin Jones, Mike Smith, and Jonathan Quick that sort of have a “controlled panic” to their game when a team is really focusing on getting guys to the front of the net. Sometimes that panic leads to spectacular winning performances (like this one) and other times it leads to the opposite. This is just my weird hockey brain working overtime and is purely a personal take by someone who has never played goaltender, so take all of that into consideration
Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com and NaturalStatTrick.com.
Full RMNB Coverage of Caps vs Lightning
Headline photo: Patrick McDermott
