The Washington Capitals came into Saturday night’s action missing about fourteen thousand players, beat the Philadelphia Flyers 2-1 in overtime, and will leave with an additional couple thousand injuries.
The Caps outshot the Flyers 40 to 29 but were out-attempted at five-on-five 45 to 43.
- As you can tell by the intro of this post the Caps were missing quite a few guys for this game. That means I don’t really take the process of this game too seriously even though I thought they really ground this one out rather well. They put 40 shots on Philly’s net and ended up out-chancing the Flyers at five-on-five in both “chance” categories that we like to look at (scoring chances and high danger chances). You’d love a regulation victory to keep in contention for the division title but they were basically playing with both hands tied behind their back and still won.
- So, let’s name all the dudes that will likely be on the roster for the playoffs that are either out right now or possibly playing through some sort of ailment. Alex Ovechkin, Nicklas Backstrom, Evgeny Kuznetsov, TJ Oshie, Tom Wilson, Conor Sheary, John Carlson, Justin Schultz, Ilya Samsonov, and Michal Kempny.
- Lars Eller was your third-period hero and the birthday boy was not only rewarded with the late, tying goal but he also played the most minutes in one game he has ever played in the NHL with 27:06, eclipsing his previous best of 22:25 from 2018. Lars has stepped up whenever the Caps need him the entire time he has been in DC. One of the most underrated players in the entire league and one of my all-time favorite Capitals. Besides his goal, he fired eight individual shot attempts toward the cage, recorded five individual scoring chances, four individual high danger chances, blocked a shot, and drew a penalty.
Conor Sheary wins it for the Capitals in overtime, his fourth career overtime winning goal and first as a Capital.
— CapitalsPR (@CapitalsPR) May 9, 2021
- The Caps sent out seven different line combos in this game. Only one played more than six minutes together at five-on-five which was the ole faithful fourth line.
- Stick taps to Craig Anderson who hasn’t played for what seems like forever and only gave up one goal against. He stopped 28 total shots and a few of those late-game saves were ginormous.
- Lastly, let’s give a little shoutout to Garrett Pilon for making his NHL debut. He only played 10:43 in a game where the Caps were missing about half the population of DC but he wasn’t “bad” and that’s about what you want from a debutant.
Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com and NaturalStatTrick.com.
RMNB Coverage of Caps vs Flyers
Headline photo: KP8 Design
