The Washington Capitals bounced back after a couple very poor losses to Metro Division teams with a win against yet another common division foe. The Caps and Ilya Samsonov shutout the Carolina Hurricanes 2-0 on home ice. I’ll take some more of that.
The Caps out-shot the Canes 30 to 23 and out-attempted them at five-on-five 44 to 29.
- The Caps took the normally dominant at even strength Carolina Hurricanes and put them in the bin outside for trash pickup. The Canes were never really in this game. Great response from the Caps as they won all three periods in my eyes. Finished the game at five-on-five with a plus-nine scoring chance differential and a plus-seven high danger chance differential.
- Ilya Samsonov recorded his first career NHL shutout, stopping all 23 Carolina shots sent his way. Young Sammy now has 13 wins in 15 starts this season. Congrats, Sammy!
- Congrats are also in order for Tom Wilson as he played in his 500th career NHL game. Willy is the youngest forward in Caps history to reach the 500 game mark.
Capitals captain @ovi8 needed 142 games to get from goal 600 to goal 685, matching Wayne Gretzky for the fewest contests to make that leap.
“The Great One” is the only member of the 700-goal club who needed fewer than 200 games to go from 600 to 700. #NHLStats pic.twitter.com/sLVkoy3H37
— NHL Public Relations (@PR_NHL) January 14, 2020
- Alex Ovechkin did what he does best and broke more records. His 685th and 686th goals put him firmly past Teemu Selanne (684) for the 11th most goals in NHL history. Next up for the Great Eight is knocking Mario Lemieux (690) out of the top ten.
- Ovi’s first also ended up being the game winner on the night, the 109th of that sort in his career. That tied him with Brendan Shanahan for sixth most game winners in NHL history.
- Another fantastic night from the fourth line which is a shocker to no one at this point. With Brendan Leipsic on the ice at five-on-five (in only 5:40 of ice time) the Caps controlled 73.7-percent of the shot attempts, recorded five scoring chances to the Canes zero, and one high danger chance to the Canes zero.
Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com and NaturalStatTrick.com.
Full RMNB Coverage of Caps vs Hurricanes
Headline photo: NBC Sports Washington
