The Washington Capitals played well shorthanded roster-wise and eventually took down the now fully eliminated New York Rangers 6-3. But, at what cost?
The Caps outshot the Rangers 40 to 26 and out-attempted them at five-on-five 46 to 31.
- The Caps didn’t give the Rangers a whole lot and they converted on a bunch of rush chances to pretty easily win this hockey game. The Caps are now 18-7-2 on the road this season and those 18 road wins are the most in the NHL.
- Let’s get this out of the way. Tom Wilson did a whole bucketload of dumb stuff in this game. I think it’s entirely likely he could get suspended for quite some time even with the punishment he was handed on the ice. I just don’t get it and I’m very tired, Robbie. You can find my more colorful takes on this on my Twitter if you so choose.
- Alex Ovechkin played a grand total of 39 seconds in this game before he either reaggravated his injury or realized he was not ready to come back. Both of those…suck.
Dowd skated a career-high 21:25 against the Rangers. Dowd entered tonight’s game logging 14:18 time on ice per game played this season, which is nearly two minutes more than his previous career high (2016-17: 12:27).
— CapitalsPR (@CapitalsPR) May 4, 2021
- Daniel Sprong now has 12 goals in 39 games this season and might be playing his way onto the Seattle Kraken. That’s a 25-goal pace over a full NHL schedule.
- Ilya Samsonov seems to have an issue with responsibility and the difference in the level of play between him and Vitek Vanecek really isn’t a thing statistically at least, so…his lack of responsibility likely has ended that goaltender battle off the ice. Vanecek picked up the 19th win of his career which leads all rookie netminders this season and puts him past Jim Carey (1994-95) for the third-most wins by a rookie goaltender in franchise history.
- John Carlson returned to the lineup and got right beside his buddy Dmitry Orlov again and those two absolutely murdered any New York opposition sent out against them. With Carlson on the ice at five-on-five, the Caps had a plus-12 shot attempt differential, a plus-eight scoring chance differential, and a plus-three high danger chance differential.
- This one has nothing to do with hockey. Russell Westbrook of your Washington Wizards put on an absolute show against the Indiana Pacers on Monday night in the Wiz’ 154-141 win (no, the game did not go to overtime). Russ had 14 points, 24 assists, and 21 rebounds for his 32nd triple-double this season. Let me list off a few things that come from that statline. He is now the only player in NBA history to record a 20-20 game without one of those statistics being points scored. He now has the most 20-assist triple-double games in NBA history with five. He has secured his fourth season averaging a triple-double. He is the first player in NBA history with multiple 20-rebound, 20-assist career games. A reminder that this guy is a 6-foot-4 point guard. Legend.
Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com and NaturalStatTrick.com.
RMNB Coverage of Caps at Rangers
Headline photo: KP8 Design
