The Washington Capitals are doing a whole lot of fighting atop the East Division of late and did some more against the Pittsburgh Penguins on Thursday night. This one didn’t go exactly as planned on the scoreboard as they dropped it in overtime 5-4.
The Caps outshot the Pens 37 to 35 and the five-on-five shot attempt battle was virtually even.
- Let me know if you’ve heard this one before. The Caps played the Pittsburgh Penguins and probably should have won by multiple goals but ended up losing by one in overtime. At one point a few seasons ago I thought it was just confirmation bias due to my hatred of that team but no, no, no. This crap happens every gosh darn season. The Caps had the better of the scoring chances in all three periods but couldn’t buy a save when they needed one.
- Extrapolating from that final point. I find Vitek Vanecek to be far more inconsistent and dependent on the team performance in front of him than Ilya Samsonov. I thought Vitek should have probably stopped two of the four he let slip by him during regulation. You’ll notice I don’t have any stats to back that up because I don’t think the numbers actually follow that due to Sammy’s very weird year and some change. It’s just a hunch and me leaning on the dreaded eye test.
- Daniel Sprong scored again and Michael Raffl took a penalty with less than five minutes remaining in the game with the Caps down one goal. Sprong now has four goals in his last three games. I think you can get what I’m hinting at in terms of future lineup decisions even if I thought that third line was very good in this game overall.
The Capitals have clinched a playoff berth for the seventh consecutive season and for the 13th time in the last 14 seasons.
— CapitalsPR (@CapitalsPR) April 30, 2021
- Nicklas Backstrom had a quiet three-assist game which is not exactly rare for him. Although you could probably give him four assists…it’s just that one ended up in the wrong net. I’m sorry, Nicky. I just had to because that was probably the worst pass of your career. I would still probably take a bullet for you.
- Justin Schultz returned to the lineup and had a two-assist night. I liked his performance overall and the Caps offense was sure humming when that top pair was out there. They registered 12 scoring chances at five-on-five with Dmitry Orlov on the ice.
- The Caps still remain first in the East Division although they and the Pens both have 69 (nice) points due to still having a game in hand on Pittsburgh which means a better win percentage. A reminder that they played that game without two of their mainstays in John Carlson and Alex Ovechkin. Please dunk on them on Saturday. Please.
Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com and NaturalStatTrick.com.
RMNB Coverage of Caps vs Penguins
Headline photo: KP8 Design
