If you wanted to know what an absolutely embarrassing defensive effort looks like…well do I have the game for you. The Caps let the Islanders do quite literally whatever they wanted on the way to an 8-4 loss.
The Isles outshot the Caps 33 to 22 and out-attempted them at five-on-five 45 to 43.
- The Islanders had 17 high danger chances in this game at five-on-five to the Caps three. I don’t think I can remember doing one of these posts where it has ever, ever, ever been that bad. They were maybe half a step away from being better off just cherry-picking three forwards all game. Awful, garbage, trash, bad.
- Brenden Dillon seems like a really cool dude but man does that contract look like it’s probably gonna be a mistake. I’ll toot my own horn a little because I called that from the second it was signed and it wouldn’t be a morning numbers post if I didn’t. Dillon was on the ice for five of the eight goals against and principally responsible for two of them.
- The Justin Schultz and Dmitry Orlov pairing was horribad. With Schultz on the ice five-on-five, the Caps were out-attempted 24 to 10, out-scoring chanced 13 to 7, and out-high danger chanced 8 to 1.
TJ Oshie: "There were some mental errors on a lot of guys' parts… A lot of us weren't sharp. We gave them Grade A scoring chances and they capitalized on most of them."
— Ian Oland (@ianoland) April 2, 2021
- Alex Ovechkin didn’t score again. That’s arguably even worse than the loss.
- Guess who is on a five-game winning streak. The Pittsburgh Penguins. They now have fifty points. Wanna know who else has fifty points? The Washington Capitals and New York Islanders. The Caps do have a game in hand on both.
- There is a game tomorrow. A lineup jumble would probably be a good idea. I have thoughts on the roster as well with the trade deadline coming up but I’ll keep those to myself for now.
Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com and NaturalStatTrick.com.
RMNB Coverage of Caps at Islanders
Headline photo: KP8 Design
