The Washington Capitals’ West Coast road trip has finally come to an end. The bruised and battered Caps’ last stop was in Seattle where the Kraken took them down by a score of 5-2.
Now the hockey can start at hours of the day that it is supposed to start.
- Did you want another slog of a game on this West Coast trip to watch? Well, you got it. The Capitals fell apart in the second period and I really don’t blame them. This 2-1-1 trip was poorly scheduled by the league and the Caps roster is just taking blow after blow after blow almost every single day at this point. The fact that they were able to play a “good” third period is a win in itself. Get home and get healthy.
- Vitek Vanecek had to put money on the board as he took on his former team of about a week. I don’t think you can blame much of this loss on double V but at the same time, it’s not the best for him in terms of near-future playing time for Ilya Samsonov to have done what he did in comparison. Vanecek made 26 stops on 30 shots faced.
- A few players had bad nights at five-on-five. Daniel Sprong turned his game around in the third but before that was on the ice for a few notable poor defensive shifts. The Caps were out-chanced 8 to 3 with that line out there. The Dowd line was also bad…again and this time the defensive zone starts were actually split very evenly between the four lines. The team gave up the most high danger chances to Seattle with that line on the ice (5). I thought the Dmitry Orlov and Nick Jensen pairing was also uncharacteristically poor and very fumbly and indecisive with the puck.
I would love to know if any other Eastern Conference team has to play their West Coast trip like this pic.twitter.com/VhVRn1AAYQ
— Chris Cerullo (@CJC_95) November 22, 2021
- Alex Ovechkin scored his 15th goal of the season which was also his 30th point in just 19 games. Ovi ended up playing over half of the third period (10:42) and was only topped by John Carlson in terms of total ice time. What an absolute machine.
- We got our first look at another former Kraken as Dennis Cholowski was a late sub into the lineup for an injured Conor Sheary. Unfortunately for him, he played the least of any Caps skater (9:57) but was still somehow out on the ice for two goals against. Individually though I didn’t think he looked “bad”.
- Back to your usually scheduled programming of me stanning Connor McMichael. McMichael was tasked with the most five-on-five, defensive zone shift starts on the team with four. With him on the ice at five-on-five, the Capitals saw a plus-two shot attempt differential, a plus-four scoring chance differential, and a plus-two high danger chance differential. The majority of those minutes came against Seattle’s top defensive pairing and the Yanni Gourde line. Play number 24, good things happen.
Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com and NaturalStatTrick.com.
