The Washington Capitals and Ottawa Senators had them a doozy of a hockey game on Monday night. We had homecomings, we had misconducts, we had dueling hat tricks, we had twelve total goals, and in the end we had a Capitals victory.
Imagine rooting for a boring hockey team when you can just root for the Washington Capitals. Let’s look at some numbers.
- As much fun as this one was, Peter Laviolette is not going to like how open and back and forth it was. The Capitals gave up 14 high danger chances to the Senators at five-on-five which matches the Lightning overtime loss in terms of most given up in one game this season. The difference there is though that the Caps matched those 14 given up with 11 of their own and the Senators are not the Tampa Bay Lightning. Still, potting seven in a win is just the best so ignore me being slightly negative for a second there.
- I said on Twitter that I was going to give Trevor van Riemsdyk some love for his early-season performance so here it is. When TVR is on the ice at five-on-five this season the Capitals control 63.5-percent of the shot attempts, 66.3-percent of the scoring chances, and 58.5-percent of the high danger chances. He also has the second most amount of defensive zone starts on the team among the defensemen at five-on-five with 12 behind only Nick Jensen at 13 so it’s not like he’s just being handed a hot start by the coaching staff. Just as a refresher ~ 60-percent in those statistical categories that we love to talk about here is considered elite, basically almost untouchable stuff but do remember this is only a six-game sample.
- TJ Oshie recorded his fifth career hat trick. I have to admit that I thought his contract would already be some sort of an issue by now. Not only is it not, but I think you could legitimately argue that he’s a little underpaid when you look at the going rate for forwards of his ability in the league right now. He scored at a pace last season that would have seen him grab a career high in goals and points at the age of 34 and that doesn’t exactly look like a train that is stopping any time soon.
- Speaking of trains that don’t ever look like they’ll stop, Alex Ovechkin put home another two goals. He is the NHL’s current leader in goals with seven through six games and is second in points (12) to only Connor McDavid (13). Ovi broke the record for multi-goal road games in NHL history set by Wayne Gretzky and we all just went, “Oh, yeah that checks out.”
The Capitals scored seven goals at five-on-five against Ottawa, the highest single-game total by Washington since Feb. 16, 2011 at Anaheim.
— CapitalsPR (@CapitalsPR) October 26, 2021
- Connor McMichael skated on the second line in an increased role and ended up with the first two points of his NHL career. It’s going to be tough to see him have to sit again once the Capitals are fully healthy because I think he’s really taking to the league and getting better and better each game. The only player with better five-on-five stats this season on the Caps than the aforementioned TVR? McMichael (in four games).
- When you talk McMichael you’re pretty much required to then talk Hendrix Lapierre. I actually thought this was Lapierre’s strongest of his three games. He played less than eight total minutes in the game (7:46) which is a coaching issue in itself in my opinion, but he was noticeably effective each time he jumped over the boards. He set the screen in front that allowed Nick Jensen’s wrister to sneak over the top of Anton Forsberg in the first period.
- Ilya Samsonov had a lot to deal with in this game. He made some really tough stops but he also let in a few that left me scratching my head a bit. I don’t think he was overall “bad” or anything but consistency during games has always been his major problem. He ended up with 32 saves on 37 shots.
- This bullet is reserved for me to shame Tim Stutzle a bit because I can and it’s clear the kid has a bit of an embellishment issue. I thought he made a meal of the Kuznetsov roughing and the Oshie “interference”. He’s already been punished this season for embellishment and the Capitals made sure to let the officials know what they thought of him more than a few times Monday night.
Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com and NaturalStatTrick.com.
