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Brought down by the Bruins: numbers for the morning after

By Chris Cerullo

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April 9, 2021 7:04 am

The Washington Capitals have lost two in a row after dropping a 4-2 home matchup to the Boston Bruins. They have yet to play a decently good game in a longer spell than that.

The Caps outshot the Bruins 33 to 32 but were out-attempted at five-on-five 39 to 36.

  • The Caps are either just plain listless or outright bad at five-on-five right now. This game was more of the former but that’s still not great, especially if you’re put into a three-goal deficit. In a third period that they trailed the entire twenty minutes the Bruins out-scoring chanced them eight to six and out-high danger chanced them five to one. How do you come back if you cant create offense or stop your opponent from creating offense?
  • The Caps had 6:26 of five-on-four power play time in the second period. In those minutes, with a man up on Boston, they were out-attempted five to four, took two shots to the Bruins two shots, had three scoring chances to the Bruins three scoring chances, and gave up the only high danger chance which Boston scored on. What in the *curse word* is that *curse word*?
  • This top line with Lars Eller on it does not work, but to be fair I don’t know how you would configure the Caps top-six right now where it would work. The Caps are willingly playing with a defensive anchor in Evgeny Kuznetsov that they do not trust whatsoever, Jakub Vrana is clearly in a funk and probably not happy, Alex Ovechkin is getting nothing at even strength right now, Nicklas Backstrom has cooled off, and Daniel Carr is in the lineup now. Roster construction has become a bit of a mess.

  • The Caps are teetering in a precarious spot in the standings right now. It’s highly unlikely they miss the playoffs at this stage but they are now two points back of the Islanders and only two points ahead of the Pens with all three teams having played 40 games. The Bruins are six points back of the Caps but have three games in hand.
  • Ovi’s power-play goal was his 266th career on the man advantage which put him past Brett Hull for sole possession of second in NHL history.
  • TJ Oshie leads the Caps in power-play goals with eight this season.

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

RMNB Coverage of Caps vs Bruins

Headline photo: KP8 Design

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