Truculent Tom: numbers for the morning after

February 26, 2021 6:40 am

The Washington Capitals didn’t have their best game Tuesday night against the Pittsburgh Penguins so in response, they decided to reverse that and dominate the puck all Thursday night against those same Pens. The Caps came out on top by a final score of 5-2 after some late, scary back and forth on the scoreboard.

The Caps outshot the Pens 35 to 28 and out-attempted them at five-on-five 55 to 37.

That is a lot more like it. The start was a little slow and there are still some issues special teams wise but it felt like the Caps really had a stranglehold on this game when it was played at five-on-five. While the Caps were leading in this game they played some really dope hockey at even strength, out-attempting the Pens by 17, holding a plus-11 scoring chance differential, and a plus-5 high danger chance differential.
Tom Wilson sure had an impact on this game. I’ll let the opinions on the hit stay with the Twitter hot take experts of the hockey world. Willy scored his seventh goal of the season which ended up being the game-winner. It’s his third game-winning goal of the season which leads the Capitals and ranks tied for third in the NHL.
Hello, members of the Nick Jensen fan club. I am your new President. In a game that saw him get exactly zero offensive zone starts (he saw six defensive zone faceoffs), the Caps with Jensen on the ice five-on-five still received 68.2-percent of the shot attempts, 70-percent of the scoring chances, and a plus-three high danger chance differential (the Pens had zero). Add that to his beauty of an assist on Nicklas Backstrom‘s opening tally.

The Capitals are 3-0-1 this season when T.J. Oshie scores a goal and 7-0-2 when he records a point.

— CapitalsPR (@CapitalsPR) February 26, 2021

It may not feel like it but the goals are coming for Alex Ovechkin. The Great Eight led the Caps with seven individual shot attempts, six individual scoring chances, and three individual high danger chances.
This one goes out to all you faceoff stat lovers out there. I am not one of you but I know you exist. No Caps center was below 54.6-percent in the dot in this game and both Nic Dowd and Lars Eller came in above 63-percent.
Weird game for Vitek Vanecek and a weird trend that Peter pointed out in the recap. For 40 minutes a night, he seems to be impenetrable even with some rebound control concerns but then falters in third periods on relatively tame shots against. We’ll still take a 26 save victory that gives him eight total on the season which ties him with the Blackhawks’ Kevin Lankinen for the most among rookie goaltenders.

Screenshot courtesy of NBC Sports Washington