The Washington Capitals responded to their dominant effort in Boston against the Bruins, with yet another effort of that kind at home against the Anaheim Ducks. The boys fought, literally, to a very sweet 5-2 win.

The Ducks out-shot the Caps 34 to 31, but were out-attempted at five-on-five 54 to 46.

• This was a great team performance. Outside of a few spells in the second period, the Caps took it to the Ducks at even strength. On the back of a great first and third period, the Caps held 54-percent of the shot attempts, 52-percent of the scoring chances, and 56.5-percent of the high danger chances at five-on-five. All of those percentages trend upwards when you adjust for score as well.
• John Carlson is flipping unbelievable y’all. His two point night was his 11th multi point game of the season already and he now has 34 total points in 23 games. Keep it up, Johnny.
• The Caps are getting secondary goal scoring from two young wingers in Jakub Vrana and Tom Wilson. Vrana scored his tenth goal of the season, his ninth at five-on-five which is tied for third in that category with Auston Matthews. Wilson grabbed his ninth of the campaign on the empty netter. Both are now slotted to score over 32 goals at their respective paces.

Entering tonight, Holtby is 5-0-0 with a 1.94 goals against average and a .934 save percentage over his last five games.

— CapitalsPR (@CapitalsPR) November 19, 2019

• Richard Panik is finally on the board in the 2019-20 season, sniping home a feed from Travis Boyd in the first minute of the game. That’s the Caps third goal in the opening minute of a game this season. Only the Avalanche (two) have also done so multiple times.
• What about that fourth line, eh? The Caps were basically untouchable with their third line on the ice at five-on-five, but the fourth line will draw the most praise and probably deservedly so for their role in this win. Brendan Leipsic was like a man possessed out there and he got backup from his partner in crime Garnet Hathaway in that scuffle that ultimately led to Chandler Stephenson‘s goal with around 30 seconds remaining in the second period.
• Speaking of Hathaway, the refs took over ten minutes to figure out all of the penalties and such from said fracas yet somehow ended up giving Hathaway the wrong offense for his spitting incident involving Erik Gudbranson. “Spitting” is specifically mentioned as a Game Misconduct level of infraction (Rule 23.8) in the NHL rulebook. Hathaway was given a “match penalty” which are reserved for intent to injury type infractions. I would expect his one game suspension due to the received match penalty to be rescinded because of this.

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

Full RMNB Coverage of Caps vs Ducks

Headline photo: NBC Sports Washington