The Washington Capitals didn’t put out their best effort of the season against the Detroit Red Wings, but you don’t really need to do so to get a win in Motown these days. The Caps fought through a couple bad periods, eventually taking down the Wings 5-2 after a couple empty net strikes by their captain.
The Caps out-shot the Wings 34 to 27, but were out-attempted at five-on-five 45 to 38.
- Look, the Caps weren’t that bad against the Wings here. It’s just you expect them to blow a team like that out of the barn. They still limited the Wings to five high danger chances at five-on-five and created nine of their own. Good enough to grab the full four points of a back-to-back with travel and head into California hot.
- I thought Ilya Samsonov looked pretty gosh darn fantastic in what his first start in seemingly forever. He’s got six wins on the season now with a 2.56 goals against average and a 91.4-percent save percentage in nine games played.
- The big story of the game is obviously the Great Eight. Alex Ovechkin had a four point night overall, has scored in three straight games now, recorded his 137th career multi goal game, and passed Jari Kurri for the tenth most hat tricks in NHL history. His 20 goals this season is good for second in the NHL to David Pastrnak of the Boston Bruins who has 24.
Thanks to the last of his 3 tonight, @Capitals captain Alex Ovechkin has joined Marcel Dionne, Mike Gartner, Jaromir Jagr & Mats Sundin as the only 5 players to record 20+ goals in each of their first 15 career NHL seasons
— StatsCentre (@StatsCentre) December 1, 2019
- Tom Wilson slotted home his tenth goal of the season, putting him on pace for close to 30 goals again (29.3 as of now). The Caps are the only team in the league with five double digit goal scorers (Ovechkin, Wilson, Jakub Vrana, TJ Oshie, and Evgeny Kuznetsov).
- Kuznetsov had a pretty “quiet” three assist game and John Carlson got back on the scoresheet as well with an assist. Good to see the stars doing star things.
- The Caps bottom six forwards looked fantastic to me. Richard Panik and Brendan Leipsic both jumping out to me as having great games. Garnet Hathaway and Panik combined for seven individual scoring chances at five-on-five.
Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com and NaturalStatTrick.com.
Full RMNB Coverage of Caps at Red Wings
Headline photo: NBC Sports Washington
