The Washington Capitals have decided that leading games against the Boston Bruins by three goals is just too much work to maintain…and this time it cost them. The Caps went up 3-0 and then let the Bruins reply with five unanswered goals leading to a regulation loss for the first time this season.
The Bruins outshot the Caps 33 to 26 and out-attempted them at five-on-five 50 to 33.
- Oh boy. Want a crash course on how to blow a lead that you have going into the third period? Look no further than the Caps performance in this game. In the third, they were out-attempted at five-on-five 25 to 6, outshot 15 to 4, and out-scoring chanced 9 to 1. That is what we call ‘turtling’ here in the biz and when you do that against teams as good as the Boston Bruins…well you already know the result. Yes, this is their first loss in regulation. Yes, they still have a gazillion standings points. Yes, the Bruins are one of the best teams in the league. But…but this is becoming a bit of a trend as much as things can become a “trend” over a ten-game sample. We expect five-on-five team numbers to take a hit when said team is winning as that’s what we call “score effects” (which increase/decrease based on the size of lead) but we also expect our favorite team to negate that to the best of their ability and not feed directly into it, which they did in this game.
- The first line was god awful. They looked disinterested, disorganized, slow…old. With Alex Ovechkin on the ice at five-on-five, the Caps got 29-percent of the shot attempts, had a minus-five scoring chance differential and created zero high danger chances (the Bruins created two). Not to mention that Tom Wilson took himself off the ice with ten minutes left in regulation by fighting Trent Frederic who has a grand total of one NHL point in 26 games played. You are not being coached by Adam Oates and being given eight minutes of ice time a night, Tom. Not an intelligent decision. You are far too important to this team’s success.
- The Brenden Dillon and Trevor van Riemsdyk pairing was the worst of the three Caps defensive units. They played a lot of their shifts with the first line so you can pretty much just extrapolate those numbers I gave you in regards to when Ovi was on the ice five-on-five to these two. I really hope Justin Schultz is back soon. Now that’s a sentence I never thought I would ever write.
Jakub Vrana recorded the lone assist on Carlson's goal, his second assist tonight and his first multi-assist game of the season.
— CapitalsPR (@CapitalsPR) February 2, 2021
- TJ Oshie somehow managed to be a minus-three on the night in a game that I thought his line was probably the Caps best offensively. I’ve said it before but TJ has legitimately taken to the center position very well and we all know about the defensive issues that Evgeny Kuznetsov has. I don’t think it will last, but maybe it should? We’d need a bigger sample to tell for sure and I don’t think we’ll get it. I could even see it ending as early as the next game as NHL coaches tend to actually think plus/minus is still a thing.
- I hope Jakub Vrana earned his way back into the top six as he is one of the Caps best players and I thought he was one of the only ones who had energy throughout this game. You can only go to the well of demoting a player to “send a message” so many times before it just doesn’t work. Ask Andre Burakovsky.
- It’s probably time for Vitek Vanecek to get a break. The youngster has faced a bucketload of shots and has made every start since Ilya Samsonov was taken out by COVID protocols.
Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com and NaturalStatTrick.com.
RMNB Coverage of Caps vs Bruins
Screenshot courtesy of NBC Sports Washington
