The Washington Capitals secured their first win at Capital One Arena this season, downing the fast paced Toronto Maple Leafs 4-3.
The shots were locked at 32 apiece after regulation, but the Leafs out-attempted the Caps at five-on-five 58 to 55.
- The Caps played an overall pretty great game against the Maple Leafs. Most notably to me was that they beat the Leafs in the five-on-five high danger chance category 12 to 9, something that they’ve made a habit of doing to teams this season, which they lacked last season. The team defense overall has been fantastic to start the year, goaltending on the other hand not so much.
- Speaking of goaltending, Ilya Samsonov got the start and made 29 saves on 32 shots. The rookie Russian is now 3-0 on the season in his starts and has a 1.84 goals against average and 93.3-percent save percentage overall. Braden Holtby has not been good to start the season to say the least, Samsonov has.
- Evgeny Kuznetsov extended his streak of recording a point in each game after his suspension. I felt like this game saw the most engaged Kuznetsov in all three zones that we’ve seen so far this season. His line with Tom Wilson and Carl Hagelin not only neutralized John Tavares’, but they actually took it to them pretty heavily.
John Carlson, Alex Ovechkin and Evgeny Kuznetsov have each extended their respective point streaks to five games. Over their last five games, Carlson has recorded 11 points (3g, 8a), Ovechkin has recorded 7 points (4g, 3a) and Kuznetsov has recorded six points (3g, 3a).
— CapitalsPR (@CapitalsPR) October 17, 2019
- John Carlson (at the time of writing) now leads the entirety of the NHL in scoring with 14 points in eight games. Carlson is the first defenseman in franchise history to record 14 points in the team’s first eight games. Alex Ovechkin and Alex Semin are the only other two players overall in franchise history to do so.
- Carlson (417) also has now passed Sergei Gonchar (416) for the fourth most points in franchise history by a defenseman.
- Another fantastically quiet night from Dmitry Orlov. The dude has been an animal to start the season. With Orlov on the ice at five-on-five, the Caps got 56.8-percent of the shot attempts, 61.1-percent of the scoring chances, and 83.3-percent of the high danger chances. That all came with over half of his even strength ice time against the Auston Matthews line.
Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com and NaturalStatTrick.com.
Full RMNB Coverage of Caps vs Maple Leafs
Headline photo: SportsNet
