The Washington Capitals have won four straight and three of those wins have come against the Philadelphia Flyers in less than a week’s time. Saturday night saw the Caps hold on to a 5-4 victory over those Flyers and keep pace with the surging New York Islanders in the division.

The Flyers outshot the Caps 32 to 23 and out-attempted them at five-on-five 48 to 35.

• I wasn’t a fan of how the Caps played in this game. This was very much a “PDO victory” in my book and not a game formula that they should be looking to repeat. Their second period was particularly bad as it saw Philadelphia turn the Caps defensive zone into a scoring chance haven. The Flyers had five high danger chances at five-on-five in the second to the Caps zero.
• Ilya Samsonov is now 4-0 with a 2.50 goals-against average and a .915 save percentage since returning from his COVID protocol-related absence.
• I wasn’t a fan of too many Capitals players’ games but Carl Hagelin stood out as a positive. With Hagelin on the ice five-on-five, the Caps got 52.9-percent of the shot attempts, 85.7-percent of the scoring chances, and scored three times.

Daniel Sprong ranks second in the NHL in goals per 60 minutes of five-on-five play (2.03) among skaters with 15 games played.

— CapitalsPR (@CapitalsPR) March 14, 2021

• Really strange time on ice numbers in this game. The four skaters with the least total time on ice (other than the injured Lars Eller) were Richard Panik (9:24), Daniel Sprong (11:12), Jakub Vrana (11:37), and Conor Sheary (11:37). I really don’t like how Peter Laviolette doles out third period ice time and it sure seems like opposing teams really DO like how he does it.
• Another game where I think Ovi was unlucky to not score twice. He had four shots on net, nine individual shot attempts, three individual scoring chances, and one individual high danger chance.
• Nick Jensen grabbed an assist on Hagelin’s goal to give him nine points on the season and he would later score his own goal to give him ten points. That total has already surpassed his 2019-20 total in 44 fewer games. Stay hot, Nick.

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

RMNB Coverage of Caps at Flyers

New headline photo: KP8 Design