The Washington Capitals completed their season series sweep of the New Jersey Devils after a 5-4 effort on Easter Sunday. The victory wrapped up all 16 available points the Caps could take from the Devs in 2021.
The Devils outshot the Caps 39 to 19 and out-attempted them at five-on-five 54 to 29.
- In my opinion, the overall effort was not great. Again. They gave a poor team far too much of the puck and needed way too many spectacular saves from their goaltender to come away with the victory. The Devils out-chanced the Caps 24 to 15 at five-on-five and that was with them purposefully benching one of their best players, Kyle Palmieri due to future trade prospects.
- That goaltender was Ilya Samsonov and he made 35 stops in this one, at least eight of those being absolute ten bellers.
- Alex Ovechkin had a three-point game and now is a point per game player this season. One of those points was his 19th goal this season and the 725th of his career. It was also his 265th career power-play goal, which tied him with Brett Hull for the second-most power-play goals in NHL history.
With the win against New Jersey, the Capitals have recorded eight wins against a single opponent in the same season for the first time in franchise history.
— CapitalsPR (@CapitalsPR) April 4, 2021
It marks the 13th time since the expansion era (1967-68) a team has beaten an opponent eight times in a season, and the first time since 2007-08 (Montreal Canadiens: eight wins versus the Boston Bruins).
— CapitalsPR (@CapitalsPR) April 4, 2021
- Another off night for the Dmitry Orlov and Justin Schultz pairing as those two have been up and down on an almost game-to-game basis recently. With Schultz on the ice five-on-five, the Caps were out-attempted 24 to 8, out-scoring chanced 10 to 2, and out-high danger chanced 5 to 1. I won’t put all of that on them as the forward help in the defensive zone was poor to say the least.
- Another game of Evgeny Kuznetsov playing less than 10 minutes (9:49) at five-on-five.
Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com and NaturalStatTrick.com.
RMNB Coverage of Caps at Devils
Headline photo: KP8 Design
