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Laying the smackdown on the Sabres: numbers for the morning after

By Chris Cerullo

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March 16, 2021 6:47 am

On Monday night, the Washington Capitals played what will likely be their easiest game of the season when they destroyed the Buffalo Sabres 6-0. They didn’t even really try the whole third period. Buffalo is…bad.

The Caps outshot the Sabres 30 to 23. We don’t really need to get into anything more “fancy” for this sort of game.

  • The Caps blitzed the Sabres for two periods and then let the Sabres do whatever they wanted in the third period like they were a bigger sibling letting a little sibling have some fun after winning the game that actually mattered. The Sabres however still could not score. Funnily enough that third period will actually hurt the Caps in the overall categories we like to look at over the season (Corsi for, scoring chances for, high danger chances for) because they basically let what is the clear worst team in the NHL have some “fun” for twenty minutes.
  • Vitek Vanecek earned the first shutout of his young NHL career. Vanecek stopped all 23 shots the Sabres fired his way. He only had to get in front of nine of those shots through two periods. He was really the only Caps player that had to move in the third period.
  • Alex Ovechkin got the goal that officially got the Caps into the endzone. Goal number 717 in the Great Eight’s career ties him with Phil Esposito for sixth all-time in NHL goal-scoring. Ovi is now also one point shy of 1,300 in his career which only 34 players in NHL history have gotten to previously.

  • The Caps have won five straight games. Guess who has won six straight? The Pittsburgh Penguins. Guess who has won nine straight? The New York Islanders. That’s just fantastic. Please beat the Islanders later today and shut them up.
  • Stealing this from my recap from last night so if you think you’ve seen it before, you have. Daniel Sprong has three goals in his last four games and points in all four of those games. He now has six goals in 17 games this season which is a 29 goal pace if he were to play a full 82 schedule. Pretty fantastic value for a player the Caps have under contract until 2022 (when he will become an RFA) for only $725,000. Could he be someone Seattle takes a long look at?
  • Evgeny Kuznetsov opened the scoring with his third goal of the season. The goal was Kuzy’s 400th career point and he has become only the 18th player in franchise history to reach that mark.
  • 12 of the Caps 18 skaters recorded at least one point in this game. Justin Schultz, Nick Jensen, and Conor Sheary all had two assist nights. I thought Schultz, in particular, was tremendous. The dude has been one hell of a signing so far.

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

RMNB Coverage of Caps at Sabres

New headline photo: KP8 Design

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