The Washington Capitals just could not score a gosh darn goal against an incredibly bad Arizona Coyotes hockey team. It’s a good thing the Coyotes have about 547 draft picks in this next draft because…woof.
The Caps did end up eventually finding the back of the net in the end after fifty minutes of regulation and came out 2-0 victors.
- This was a tough game for me to get a handle on. It felt like the Caps had the puck literally the entire game and the only Arizona chances came off of them countering Washington’s offense. Overall it was another pretty casual effort but this time they got the saves they needed and eventually found a way to dent the twine on a power play. Pretty boring last forty minutes that saw the Caps only record 19 shot attempts at five-on-five which they bested in their first period alone with 20.
- Alex Ovechkin is still yet to not record a point in a game this season. The Great Eight added two more in this one to now give him nine goals and 15 points in eight games. He is the current league leader in goals and tied with Connor McDavid for the league lead in points. This is the longest season-opening point streak of his career, tying the eight-game streak he had in his rookie season. He is mother flipping 36-years-old.
- 16 shots faced and 16 stopped for Ilya Samsonov. First shutout of the season for Sammy and hopefully that spurs him on to a good stretch of games in the near future. It was the fourth career shutout for the young Russian netminder.
With two assists, Kuznetsov passed Scott Stevens (429) for 12th on the Capitals’ franchise points list. Additionally, he is four assists shy of 300 career assists.
— CapitalsPR (@CapitalsPR) October 30, 2021
- The three players that played the least in this game were Brett Leason (8:40), Hendrix Lapierre (9:07), and Connor McMichael (11:19). I’m sure you can see the theme there for yourself. If you cant play those dudes more against Arizona, who can you play them more against? You cant tell me one of those two young centers wouldn’t be a better option on the current first unit power play than Conor Sheary. They aren’t even on the second unit though.
- Speaking of Leason, I thought he was relatively noticeable in a good way in his NHL debut. His big body is already clearly NHL ready and his line was good in the few minutes it got. With them, on the ice five-on-five, the Caps got over 60-percent of the shot attempts, held a plus-four scoring chance differential, and a plus-two high danger chance differential (Arizona did not record one against them).
- I’m really enjoying Evgeny Kuznetsov on the penalty kill which is something I never thought I’d say. It seems to bring an aggressiveness to his game that can sometimes be lacking. He played 1:49 of PK time in this game, second only to Lars Eller (2:01) among Capitals centers. He was even trusted with two defensive zone starts shorthanded.
Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com and NaturalStatTrick.com.
