The Washington Capitals completed their road back-to-back, taking home all four points before they meet the Pittsburgh Penguins on Sunday. This latest win came over the Columbus Blue Jackets 4-3.
Quiet those cannons.
- This is the bullet where I normally talk about the five-on-five process but I’m just going to chuck that out because of the road back-to-back nature of the game. It wasn’t pretty through 40 minutes but the battle in the third was there and so were the two points. It was incredibly important to take that one in regulation from a team in the Metro that has a handful of games in hand on the Caps. Huge. Gotta love it.
- The line that ended up winning the game was really the only line that worked all night. That would be Connor McMichael, Conor Sheary, and Daniel Sprong. McMichael didn’t end up with a point on the winner but his speed and puck retrieval on a corner dump gave the Caps the possession that led to the game-winner. That kid is going to be a good one. 13 games into his NHL career and I don’t think he should ever see the AHL again.
- Sammy, Sammy, Sammy. I don’t know what they’re going to do with Ilya Samsonov. He made some pretty fantastic-looking saves but you never know with him if they need to be fantastic just because he’s all over the place in his crease or not. I think he settled down as the team in front of him settled down but it was a gongshow in that net at some points. He ended up with 26 stops on 29 shots.
- Garnet Hathaway scored his first two goals of the season. I share an opinion with Peter (at least I think this is his opinion) that Hathaway may actually be the secret ingredient that makes that normal Caps fourth line work. And speaking of that line…
- Axel Jonsson-Fjallby might force Carl Hagelin onto another team by the trade deadline. AJF grabbed his first NHL point on Hathaway’s first goal and was one of the more noticeable Caps skaters in a positive way in this game.
- The Capitals now have 20 points and are just behind the Carolina Hurricanes in the Metro. Teams behind them have plenty of opportunities to catch up with their games in hand but it’s still good to see the Caps keeping pace with how many key injuries they have.
Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com and NaturalStatTrick.com.
