It’s that time of year again, folks. Hockey season is upon us once more and with that comes your obvious favorite series of posts, numbers for the morning after. Join me on yet another 82-game journey of numbers both large and small, complicated and elementary, maybe even sometimes fun. One thing I can promise is that they will always go well with your morning caffeinated drink of choice.
Your Washington Capitals opened the 2019-20 NHL season with a tasty 3-2 overtime victory over the defending Cup champion St. Louis Blues. They out-shot the Blues 34 to 22 and out-attempted them at five-on-five 40 to 28.
- Wazzup fam, good to be back with these posts. A surprising number of you have told me at the various RMNB offseason events that you really enjoy these and that makes me as happy as Alex Ovechkin when Nicklas Backstrom scores a goal.
- Lets dive into the game from an overall standpoint first. Ian voiced his concerns on the “Ask Us Anything” live Q&A session that he and Peter did before the game, that the Blues would have the typical banner raising jump throughout the game and maybe put a whooping on the Caps in their home opener. I shared those same concerns and they may have actually had merit for the first 15 minutes or so, but after that the Capitals thoroughly took over the game and kinda coasted as much as you can “coast” to an overtime victory. In the final two periods of play plus overtime, the Caps out-shot the Blues 29 to 15, out-attempted them 48 to 22, and out-scoring chanced them 24 to 11.
- That guy was doing that guy things again. By “that guy”, I know you know I’m talking about the greatest goal scorer of all time. Ovi was phenomenal in his season debut, getting 23:50 of total ice time, firing five shots on net, attempting 16 shots total, contributing five of those scoring chances, and oh yeah…scoring another highlight reel goal. Our good friend, Dimitri Filipovic called him “the same old freakin’ animal” and I agree, Ovi definitely walks alone in a place where no one follows him.
Alex Ovechkin gives the Caps their first goal of the season. No active player in the NHL has more season-opening goals than Ovechkin's 11 in his career.
— CapitalsPR (@CapitalsPR) October 3, 2019
- Lets talk about Martin Fehervary‘s first NHL game. We had some growing pains early on with the delay of game penalty, but overall I thought he showed that he’s more than NHL ready. Fehervary at five-on-five, paired with Radko Gudas, saw 64.7-percent of the shot attempts head the correct direction, but I don’t think you really need the numbers to know that it was a more positive than negative NHL debut. Future is bright.
- Speaking of Gudas, did anyone really know before the Caps traded for him that he was like…you know…actually really good at playing defense? I thought he was very impressive in his Caps debut and actually led the team in five-on-five scoring chance for percentage at 75-percent (six chances for, two against).
- Staying with the Czech and Slovak theme here for a second, what an opening night from Jakub Vrana. Young Jake was flying around the ice the entire game and probably should have added another goal or two to his eventual overtime winner. Definitely feels like he is absolutely primed for another breakout season.
- I thought the Caps best forward line on the night was Vrana’s second line, centered by Lars Eller with TJ Oshie on the other wing. Peter mentioned in the recap about not being opposed to them sticking together and that got me thinking that maybe the Caps should try Evgeny Kuznetsov on the third line in between Carl Hagelin and Richard Panik. Kuzy had the best season of his career in between two defensively responsible, yet still offensively capable wings in Justin Williams and Marcus Johansson. Obviously Hagelin and Panik are a step or two down offensively from Williams and Johansson, but hey maybe worth a try for a couple of games?
Eller has now recorded his second assist of the night. His totals raise to eight points (1g, 7a) in this scenario since 2018-19. https://t.co/2FloI1AzCV
— CapitalsPR (@CapitalsPR) October 3, 2019
- Braden Holtby shook off a kinda meh start and ended up with a solid 20 save effort that saw him give up absolutely nothing in the final 42:51. Newly minted backup to Holtby, Ilya Samsonov will get his first NHL action on Friday against the Islanders on Long Island. That’s exciting.
- Wrapping up with a negative, because it wouldn’t be a morning numbers post without one. I don’t know why the Caps trusted a couple games of preseason play over like 140 plus games of actual evidence that Chandler Stephenson is not good enough for this team. The third line, centered by him, was my clear weakest of the bunch.
Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com and NaturalStatTrick.com.
Full RMNB Coverage of Caps at Blues
Headline Photo: NBCSN
