The Washington Capitals beat up on the Rangers in multiple ways on the way to a 4-2 victory. What an interesting one.
The Caps outshot the Rangers 35 to 21 and out-attempted them at five-on-five 41 to 21.
- Let’s get the actual hockey stuff out of the way first. What will be lost in all of this nonsense is that the Caps beat the snot out of the Rangers in these two games and they did it with what feels like about half their roster. And…it wasn’t particularly difficult at all. The Rangers only came to fight in this one and that’s exactly all they did. The Caps recorded twelve high danger chances at five-on-five to the Rangers grand total of two. This one wasn’t close when it was actually being played like a professional team sport.
- So, the Rangers decided to turn this into a gongshow in retaliation for the NHL not suspending Tom Wilson for his actions on Monday night. In the process, they lost five out of the six fights by my tally, Pavel Buchnevich savagely cross-checked Anthony Mantha in the face and earned a major penalty plus likely suspension, and they effectively rendered their own point moot. Well done.
- You can go back to my tweets from Monday night and the morning numbers post for that game and see that I actually agreed in terms of the need to suspend Wilson for his punches on Buchnevich. The Panarin stuff was obscenely dangerous but is still a complete and utter overreaction in terms of intent and the portion of fault on Panarin has been completely lost in the NHL media world for some reason. With all that being said, I think hockey Twitter, Reddit, etc. have lost their collective minds. A stark reminder that anyone in the sport of hockey or adjacent to it that is ever acting holier than thou about player safety is likely full of you know what.
- There was a whole lot of calling Wilson names that are unfortunate, gross synonyms for milksop (in that context) on social media after he left the game with an injury as some in the hockey world apparently thought that meant he was ducking retaliation even though he would beat the entire Rangers lineup six ways from Sunday. Yet, only one team ducked Zdeno Chara the entire night.
Vitek Vanecek improves to 20-9-4 on the season. With his 20th win, Vanecek joins Michal Neuvirth (27 wins in 2010-11) and Bob Mason (20 wins in 1986-87) as the only rookie goaltenders in franchise history to record 20 or more wins in a season.
— CapitalsPR (@CapitalsPR) May 6, 2021
- TJ Oshie is just the best. Tim Junior recorded his fourth career hat trick and the first hat trick by a Caps player this season in the game directly after his father’s death. Love ya, Osh.
- Trevor van Riemsdyk is making it incredibly hard to even consider scratching him when the Caps lineup is fully healthy. He had yet another excellent game. With him on the ice at five-on-five, the Caps out-attempted New York 15 to 6, recorded ten scoring chances to the Rangers one, and five high danger chances to the Rangers zero. He was also phenomenal on the early five-on-three penalty kill that the Caps had to endure.
- Well, the Caps are done with the Rangers this season now. I highly doubt this whole thing is over though and we’ll likely see more of the same next season when these two teams meet. Yay.
Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com and NaturalStatTrick.com.
RMNB Coverage of Caps at Rangers
Headline photo: KP8 Design
