The Washington Capitals absolutely marinated, basted, baked, and sliced up their rival Pittsburgh Penguins on Sunday night. The Caps came out 6-1 victors in their last home game before making a trip westward to play the entire state of California.
Oh, I was also on a podcast during the final minutes of the third period. More on that and the game below the jump.
- The Caps beat the snot out of the Pens at five-on-five in this game. Really no other way to put it. The heat map above speaks for itself. The first period was a bit of a back and forth track race but from then on the Capitals only gave up two high danger chances to the Pens. That’s four wins in a row for a team missing its entire second line.
- Martin Fehervary looked like he was shot out of a cannon. He scored only the second shorthanded goal by a Caps defenseman in the last ten years (John Carlson, 2015) and he clearly made Sidney Crosby very mad which is always a mega plus. It’s easy to forget that Marty is still a rookie and only 22-years-old because of how seamless he has fit in on an NHL top pairing. I really liked Craig Laughlin’s comparison of Fehervary to Scott Niedermayer last night just in terms of style. Very apt.
- Another youngster that impressed me and I thought had his best game as an NHL player was Aliaksei Protas. Protas showed me a few flashes in Columbus that he was starting to catch on to the NHL game and he took another step Sunday, in my opinion. He was robbed of his first NHL point I think twice by Carl Hagelin. When he uses his size and absurd reach for offensive gain he can be unstoppable. If he truly figures the league out at some point and his skating can come along just a little more, he’s going to be a player. He played over 12 minutes which always helps as you cant play well if you aren’t playing in the first place. The only forwards that had better expected goals for percentages at five-on-five than him (74.2-percent) were Lars Eller (74.8-percent) and Daniel Sprong (76.4 percent).
- Quick break from stats. I went on the Pizza’s Here Podcast last night. Real cool dudes that have correct opinions about hockey. You should check it out below this bullet. Just a forewarning, we do say quite a few f and s bombs. I also complain a lot about Peter Laviolette but I actually think he’s a really good coach overall. He just has his quirks that annoy me.
🚨LIVESTREAM EPISODE S2:E6🚨https://t.co/x9T5gBQIQE
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— Pizza’s Here Podcast (@PizzasHerePod) November 15, 2021
- Back to the game. Vitek Vanecek with another sparkling performance. Pittsburgh didn’t get a ton later in the game but he for sure was the reason the game wasn’t tied after twenty minutes. 20 stops on 21 shots for VV. Looks like he wants to put that number one goaltender spot into a stranglehold.
- Garnet Hathaway has exploded offensively in the past two games and you just love to see it. The dude works really hard and he has taken the pest responsibilities away from Tom Wilson which has let Wilson be the top-line winger that he is more often. Hathaway now has three goals on the season and led the Caps with six shots on goal in this game. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this has happened with him playing with more offensively gifted players recently.
- Don’t you just love to see former Pens own Pittsburgh? Sprong had a goal, Conor Sheary had a goal, Justin Schultz was one of the Caps best defensemen out of nowhere, and Carl Hagelin…man Sprong was good wasn’t he?
Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com and NaturalStatTrick.com.
