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Czech mate: numbers for the morning after

By Chris Cerullo

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January 16, 2021 7:00 am

The Washington Capitals got right back to business and picked up their second victory of the young season, slaying the Buffalo Sabres in back-to-back nights to kick off the 2021 season with a bang.

The white-clad Caps needed heroics from two Czech youngsters but ultimately sealed a stingy 2-1 victory in the hot wing capital of the country.

The Sabres outshot the Caps 31 to 21 and out-attempted them at five-on-five 36 to 34.

  • This was less good than the first one against Buffalo. You kind of expect a team to play better in a back-to-back in their own building to start off a season after they lost the first, but there were times where the Caps defaulted to a lot of the bad they tended to do last season. I was encouraged by their third-period effort, but they were listless at best in the first and downright bad in the second. You really want to see them keep muting team’s attempts defensively as they did in both of these games but not at the expense of their own offense like we saw in this particular matchup.
  • Discipline. A large storyline from last year reared its ugly head again in this one. Five power plays given up to Buffalo and a whole zero drawn by the Caps. Some of that is on the refs when it comes to calling one or two on the Sabres, but I wasn’t exactly upset with any of the calls against the Caps either. Luckily the power play was absolutely stellar and they got some timely saves from the dude I’m about to talk about next.
  • The Caps goalie factory looks like it will pump out yet another surefire NHL caliber netminder as Vitek Vanecek picked up his first career victory in his first career NHL start. 30 stops on 31 shots and only beaten by an unfortunate deflection that robbed him of a spotless debut. I loved how composed he was overall and it would be awesome if he and Ilya Samsonov could make it hard for Peter Laviolette to decide which goaltender to ride this season.

  • The other Czech to have an impact on this game was Jakub Vrana as he potted his second goal of the season to open the scoring. The slithery snake boy looks primed to have yet another dynamite offensive season…right as he is due for a big ole raise in pay.
  • That Caps top line that dominated the first game did not have the same success in this one. The top trio got burned for a minus-six scoring chance differential at five-on-five and Alex Ovechkin couldn’t buy a good look at the net. Maybe the late change to bump Tom Wilson up a line will stick when the Caps do battle against the Pens.
  • I thought Richard Panik had a strong night and that’s not something you could really say about him much last season as he stumbled and bumbled around an injury and lineup changes. He played a good portion late in the game on the wing of Evgeny Kuznetsov and that line seemed to gel pretty well in the short sample size we saw. Maybe Laviolette sticks with that change as it’s always good to have a two-way winger on that second line.

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

RMNB Coverage of Caps at Sabres

Screenshot courtesy of NBC Sports Washington

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