The Washington Capitals continued their up and down, up and down, up and down play on Saturday afternoon with an impressive 5-2 victory over the Pittsburgh Penguins. That one felt good.
Total shots were deadlocked at 28 apiece, but the Caps out-attempted the Pens at five-on-five 41 to 39.
- That’s the type of effort that you want to see every single game. It wasn’t perfect by any means in terms of discipline still being a gigantic issue, but in general the five-on-five play especially to open the action was dominant. The Caps, holding a 3-0 lead for the entirety, even held the Pens to almost nothing offensively in the second period and created quality of their own to boot. The game was really over once Nic Dowd put home his second of the afternoon shorthanded to open the third frame.
- Obviously a huge night for the Caps fourth line of Dowd, Richard Panik, and Garnet Hathaway. The trio combined for six points, Panik now has six points in his last four games, Dowd recorded the first multi goal game of his career, and Hathaway is now riding a three game point streak.
- It felt like this was the first time in some time that Braden Holtby didn’t need to be otherworldly to pick up a win. He was still very solid, making 26 stops on 28 shots, including shutting the door on a Jared McCann penalty shot in the second period. Braden has stopped five of the seven penalty shots he has faced in his career.
Oshie has scored six goals in his last eight games against the Penguins.
— CapitalsPR (@CapitalsPR) March 7, 2020
After Alex Ovechkin got his 300th shot of the year last night, here’s the full list of active players with multiple 300+ shot seasons:
Ovechkin – 14
Burns – 4
Carter – 3
Kovalchuk – 3
Seguin – 3
Bergeron – 2
MacKinnon – 2
Kessel – 2
Pacioretty – 2
Parise – 2
E.Staal – 2— Dimitri Filipovic (@DimFilipovic) March 5, 2020
- The above stat is nuts for a few reasons. Alex Ovechkin is a shot generation legend, he was held shotless on Saturday for only the 15th time in his career, and the Caps still scored five goals and won.
- Related to that is the fact that Ovi and Evgeny Kuznetsov just do not work on a line together. It’s just not the move. Ever. You don’t want your top line being your only line getting trounced at even strength all game.
- Too many penalties. Again. Pittsburgh went 1-for-5 on their chances compared to the Caps going 0-for-1 on their own.
Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com and NaturalStatTrick.com.
Full RMNB Coverage of Caps at Penguins
Headline photo: NBC Sports Washington
