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California love: numbers for the morning after

By Chris Cerullo

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December 5, 2019 7:01 am

The Washington Capitals will take your Californian back-to-back and leave with all the points. Two regulation wins in a row for the good guys, this time a 3-1 victory over the Los Angeles Kings.

The Kings out-shot the Caps 23 to 22, but were out-attempted at five-on-five 41 to 34.

  • The Caps feel like they’re on cruise control right now with how good they’re playing combined with the points they’re racking up. All this without Nicklas Backstrom in the lineup as well. This one was a particularly dominant, shutdown defensive game. Not a sight for midnight, east coast eyes, but probably a hockey coach dream.
  • Ilya Samsonov was one small puck handling gaffe away from his first career NHL shutout. Outside of that one play he was brilliant and it really seems like he has hit a groove at the pro level. Kid’s good, y’all. Could he receive some third place-ish Calder votes this summer if he keeps this up?
  • John Carlson is just ridiculous right now. He scored his 100th and 101st career goals in this game to give him 42 points in 30 games.

  • Carlson’s first goal was his 10th of the season. The Caps now have six players with at least ten goals (Alex Ovechkin, Jakub Vrana, TJ Oshie, Evgeny Kuznetsov, Tom Wilson). No other team has more than four.
  • This Caps team now has 47 standings points through their first 30 games. That’s the franchise record, which is somewhat unbelievable with how many fantastic regular season Caps teams there have been in the past decade-plus.
  • I thought Nick Jensen was a good standout in this game. Caps saw a plus-16 shot attempt differential, plus-6 scoring chance differential, and a plus-five high danger chance differential with him on the ice at five-on-five.

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

Full RMNB Coverage of Caps at Kings

Headline photo: NBC Sports Washington

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