The Washington Capitals are hot, hot, hot. The boys from DC went into Philadelphia and put down the Flyers 5-3 to take home their seventh victory in their last eight tries.
The Flyers outshot the Caps 33 to 22 and out-attempted them at five-on-five 40 to 24.
- At first glance those shot and shot attempt totals do not look good for the dudes we root for. Au contraire, the Caps controlled almost all of the quality chances that occurred even strength in this game. For the full, final two periods of the game, they held the Flyers five-on-five to only three scoring chances and without a single high danger chance. Just check out that heat map. Defensive excellence…almost the exact opposite of the previous game against New Jersey.
- Nic Dowd and his whole line were phenomenal in this game and Dowd was rewarded with two goals for his hard work. I’ve maligned that fourth line of late and they responded by coming up with 40-percent of the Caps scoring chances in their 8:06 of ice time at five-on-five.
- I thought Ilya Samsonov was shaky in his 30-save win, the fourth two points he has earned between the pipes this season. I’d love to see him get a good, solid run of starts here so the Caps can see what they fully have in the young Russian this season.
John Carlson becomes the first defenseman in franchise history and the third-fastest active defenseman to reach the 500-point mark, doing so in 783 career games. pic.twitter.com/UPUBjhEc6t
— CapitalsPR (@CapitalsPR) March 12, 2021
- Alex Ovechkin scored his ninth of the season thanks to a fantastic setup from Brian Elliott and Ivan Provorov. Ovi was firing the puck at will for what seems like the tenth game in a row. He ended up with seven shots on net, 11 individual shot attempts, six individual scoring chances, and two individual high danger chances. Probably unlucky to not have had some sort of multigoal game.
- In a regular 82-game NHL season, Conor Sheary would be on pace to hit over 20 goals as he has six in just 23 games. For just over $700,000 in terms of salary that is an obvious, complete bargain and he has come with valuable, overall play to back up his goal scoring.
- So the Caps have won seven of eight and that means they should be soaring up the East Division standings right? Nope. The New York Islanders have won seven games in a row and remain two points above the Caps for the division lead (Caps have a game in hand) and the Pittsburgh Penguins have won four games in a row which sees them sitting third and only three points behind the Caps. We also cannot forget about the Boston Bruins as they have two games in hand on the Caps and sit four points back of second. Fun.
Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com and NaturalStatTrick.com.
RMNB Coverage of Caps at Flyers
Screenshot courtesy of NBC Sports Washington
