Your Washington Capitals are still playing absolute garbage hockey and it feels like we haven’t see this sort of low level since Adam Oates was behind the bench. Things only continued in the wrong direction as the Caps spoiled Alex Ovechkin’s 700th goal night with a listless 3-2 loss to the New Jersey Devils.
The Caps out-shot the Devs 35 to 29, but were out-attempted at five-on-five 40 to 37.
- The Caps sucked. Again. I’m very tired of talking about this. You all already know it’s happening, the play clearly doesn’t pass the eye test, and it’s showing up on the scoreboard and in the standings so there really is no need to keep trying to explain this stuff. Atrocious first two periods where the Devils even with a lead were getting whatever they wanted against the Caps. You cant “make up” your horrid starts to games with frantic third period comebacks with the goaltender pulled every night. Embarrassing.
- With the primary assist on Tom Wilson‘s 19th of the season, John Carlson tied Calle Johansson (474) for the most points by a defenseman in franchise history. He also set a new career single season high with said assist being his 71st point of the year.
- There’s a lot of good stuff in this Twitter thread from Peter detailing just how bad the Caps have been in this stretch and these numbers are from before they were bad yet again in this game:
This is so bad. So so bad. I don't know how to be cool about how bad this is. SO BAD. pic.twitter.com/2RK3cYDs76
— Peter Hassett (@peterhassett) February 21, 2020
- Alex Ovechkin finally scored the 700th goal of his career and it sucks that the team playing like it is right now kind of sapped a lot of fun out of the moment. Ovi reached the mark in his 1,144th career game, becoming the second fastest player in NHL history to do so.
- Ovi also became the fastest player in NHL history to go from 600 to 700 career goals (155 games), besting the previous record of 169 games set by Wayne Gretzky. Ovi is only the second non-North American to reach the 700 goal total, joining the Czech Republic’s Jaromir Jagr.
- Lets finish up with more Ovi fun because why not. He has also joined the Detroit Red Wings’ Gordie Howe (786) as the only players to record 700-plus career goals with one franchise. He also passed Brett Hull for the fourth most career road goals in NHL history (354) and is just one off of Jagr for third.
Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com and NaturalStatTrick.com.
Full RMNB Coverage of Caps at Devils
Headline photo: NBC Sports Washington
