The Washington Capitals are absolutely in a groove when it comes to taking points off of anyone in their way. They continued that groove Sunday in Carolina with a 4-2 win over the Hurricanes.

It wasn’t pretty at some stages but they got it done on the road still missing what feels like half of their lineup.

• Peter Laviolette described this game perfectly in his postgame presser. He referred to the first period as back-and-forth, the second period as #ALLCAPS, and the third as the Canes having “pushed really hard”. The numbers back that up exactly. Through forty minutes the Capitals at five-on-five had out-attempted Carolina 36 to 31, out-scoring chanced them 15 to 12, and out-high danger chanced them 7 to 4. That got entirely flipped on its head in the third as the Canes came with wave after wave to try and tie the game up. They eventually did get that tie but lack of discipline cost them in the end as the Caps were able to convert on what was basically still a five-on-three advantage to win the game. I wasn’t happy with the Caps’ third as it felt like they were careless with the puck and just invited pressure from Carolina by getting away from their forechecking game in favor of playing it safe in the neutral zone. The Canes had double the amount of high danger chances in the third alone as they did in the first two frames combined.
• Ilya Samsonov was stout yet again and has still yet to lose in regulation. I don’t think the Caps get a point in this game without some of his ridiculous stops in tight. Sammy is now 9-0-1 on the season with a 2.30 goals-against average, and a .918-save percentage and has basically pulled an Uno reverse card on the entire Capitals goaltending conversation.
• I thought the first line was the clear best line for the Caps as it has been really all season. Alex Ovechkin grabbed his 19th goal of the season, Aliaksei Protas cashed in for his first career NHL goal, and although he didn’t make it on the scoresheet it sure felt like Evgeny Kuznetsov impacted the game in a majorly positive manner. Protas is going to make life hard for the coaching staff once more of the roster gets healthy. I think he’s a perfect fit on that top line in the 2007-2009 Viktor Kozlov type role.

Alex Ovechkin now has 24 5v5 points this season

Aaron Ekblad is the only other player in the league who has even been on the ice for 24 of their team’s 5v5 goals this season

— Dimitri Filipovic (@DimFilipovic) November 28, 2021

• John Carlson has really picked up his scoring lately and I honestly think he’s going the right way with the rest of his game as well. With three points in this one, he now leads the entire league in scoring by a defenseman at the time of me writing this post with 22. In his last eight games, Carlson has 13 points. He had only five points in the eight games in October.
• Don’t look now Team Canada but Tom Wilson is a point per game player and he’s still constantly producing even away from the Capitals’ top line and with a mixture of talent filling in on the second line. Tom has 22 points in 22 games and his 16 points at five-on-five rank tied for third in the entire NHL.
• I think it was Joe B the other day who asked Locker if Locker would believe him if he told him Dmitry Orlov was currently the Caps’ fifth-leading scorer. Dima dished out the perfect pass to Ovi for the Caps’ first goal and finished off the Canes with a goal of his own on the power play. Those two points have him still as the Caps’ fifth-leading scorer with 12 points in 22 games and I really like the power play wrinkles the team is now using that include him. It’s unconventional to see a defenseman below the red line at any time but Orlov can sure make it work with how smooth he is on the puck.

Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com and NaturalStatTrick.com.