The Washington Capitals started slow, took too many really dumb penalties, couldn’t penalty kill, and…scored multiple times on their own power play? What? Wow.
Stay out of the box and you win this one. Don’t, and lose 4-2.
- The Caps got blitzed out of the gates in the first as they seemed like they didn’t have their legs early on in this back-to-back second half. It didn’t show on the scoreboard but the Canucks out-chanced the Caps 19 to 7 in the first alone and that’s just not great. Giving up almost a chance every minute. Things settled down later on and I thought the Caps deserved more from this game overall but the bounces were just not falling and the dudes were taking some really stupid penalties.
- The Capitals’ power play finally scored multiple times in one game in what literally feels like three years. Is the Canucks penalty kill absolutely god awful? Yes. Do we care? No. Please for the love of god let that spurn on some momentum with a man advantage. It will lead to more Ovi goals and that’s really all I care about.
- Speaking of which, Alex Ovechkin scored for the 26th time this season. The goal trusted him into a tie for both the league lead in goals and the league lead in points with Edmonton’s Leon Draisaitl. The Oilers have four games in hand on the Caps but what Ovi is doing at 36-years-old is nothing but legendary.
That marks Ovechkin's first career goal against goaltender Thatcher Demko, the 153rd goaltender Ovechkin has scored on in his career. There have been 6,684 skaters in NHL history that have scored 153 or fewer goals in their career.
— CapitalsPR (@CapitalsPR) January 16, 2022
- Uncharacteristically terrible night from Nick Jensen at five-on-five. The Caps got peppered with him on the ice, out-attempted 27 to 8, and out-chanced 13 to 7. The constant change in the defense corps almost every single game due to COVID is probably not helping.
- Ilya Samsonov let in three goals on 31 shots against. He certainly had a tougher assignment than Vitek Vanecek did against the Islanders but I still thought he could have been better. I just have absolutely zero confidence watching games with him in the net right now. There is a level of controlled panic to his game that I don’t think will ever leave and it gives me anxiety.
- The following players all played the least in this game. Brett Leason (7:12), Aliaksei Protas (8:37), Daniel Sprong (9:30), and Connor McMichael (10:15). None of them took a terrible penalty, or two, that cost the Caps on the ensuing attempted kill.
Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com and NaturalStatTrick.com.
