The Washington Capitals won a hard-fought road battle with the Los Angeles Kings on no rest 2-0, Wednesday night…and technically Thursday morning. That is a great two points to pick up.
And also I’m sorry about the pun.
- The Caps outbattled the Kings and got some really clutch stops from their goaltender on the way to the win. Back-to-backs like these are always tough to evaluate on just an individual game scale so I’m not gonna put a ton of emphasis on the five-on-five stats like I normally do. It’s never easy to win in California for an Eastern Conference team and they’ve picked up three of four available points. Now time for some rest and to grab the final two in San Jose.
- I thought the Caps best forward in this game was Aliaksei Protas. He gets better almost shift to shift at this point it feels like. Peter Laviolette tasked his line with the most defensive zone starts at five-on-five and they were successful as a trio in those shifts. Protas alone was responsible for five individual shot attempts and team highs in both individual scoring chances with five and individual high danger chances with four.
- Ilya Samsonov was downright fantastic. He came up with 34 stops in his fifth career shutout. When he is on like that, he is near impossible to beat. I would argue that’s the best individual performance from a Caps goaltender so far this season.
The Capitals improve to 10-2-5 on the season and 5-1-2 on the road. Washington's .750 road point percentage ranks tied for second in the NHL (Carolina: .857; Tampa Bay: .750).
— CapitalsPR (@CapitalsPR) November 18, 2021
- Another player that I thought was very good in this game was Daniel Sprong. When he moves his feet as he did in this game he can be a one-man, coast-to-coast zone entry machine. He ended the game behind only Ovi on the team in terms of shots on goal (five) and shot attempts (seven). When he is involved like that in a game he is such a valuable offensive weapon. I’d really love to see him get first unit power play time.
- The third part of the line that featured Protas and Sprong was Garnet Hathaway. Hathaway now has five goals in his last four games which has him tied with Tom Wilson for third on the team in goal scoring. I’ve said this before but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this surge has happened right after he got away from the Dowd and Hagelin pairing.
- Trevor van Riemsdyk was also very solid but really when isn’t he? His reads on the play in front of him and his ability to get to the puck first are just the best. Orlov and Jensen could teach a class on stepping up and closing gaps from game tape from this game alone as well.
Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com and NaturalStatTrick.com.
