Well, the Washington Capitals are on the brink of elimination. The Caps couldn’t find a win in Boston, dropping Game Four by a score of 4-1. They will return to DC trying to save their season.
The Bruins outshot the Caps 37 to 20 and out-attempted them at five-on-five 41 to 32.
- Peter put the word “humiliated” in the title of his recap for a reason. In a playoff series when you’re down 2-1, mathematically you really, really, really need to win Game Four. The Caps couldn’t do that and didn’t even come close from the drop of the puck. The boys managed a grand total of 11 shots on goal at five-on-five in this game and only 20 total. The Bruins had 29 at five-on-five alone. The Bruins did a lot of good with that possession, securing nine high danger chances at five-on-five in the game to the Caps one. A 4-1 scoreline was probably nice to the Caps when you also factor in the special teams ineptitude.
- You can pick out pretty much any Caps player from this game and they just didn’t have it. The Caps two worst skaters in terms of five-on-five shot-attempt percentage were their top two centers, Nicklas Backstrom (25-percent) and Evgeny Kuznetsov (28.6-percent). That ain’t gonna work, fam.
- None of the blame for this game rests on the shoulders of Ilya Samsonov who so very clearly has all the talent in the world to push more towards an Andrei Vasilevskiy type career instead of an Evgeni Ryabchikov type career. I still think he’s the Caps number one of the future if he can just not be a knucklehead…to put it lightly. Sammy made 33 stops in a game where his team gave him little respite.
Alex Ovechkin scores on the power play to cut the deficit to two goals. It marks Ovechkin's 71st career playoff goal, passing Steve Yzerman and tying Bryan Trottier for the 16th-most playoff goals in NHL history.
— CapitalsPR (@CapitalsPR) May 22, 2021
- The fourth line is still awesome. Unfortunately they are by themselves right now.
- The Caps have Connor McMichael, Alexander Alexeyev, Martin Fehervary, Brett Leason, and Garrett Pilon up as black aces right now. They along with Daniel Sprong and Trevor van Riemsdyk have clean bills of health as far as we know. Is it time to slot some of them in for guys that are operating at 70-percent or even less? I think so after watching the Caps limp through Game Four.
- Nothing is over yet, but it’s sure an uphill battle. Half of this team is clearly playing hurt but that’s a bullet you gotta bite when you go for age and experience over some of the youth listed above. I think the pieces of a contender are still littered across this team…it just needs some aggressive tinkering, an Alex Ovechkin contract, and some much better embracing of the younger dudes.
Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com and NaturalStatTrick.com.
Headline photo: KP8 Design
