The Washington Capitals set off on the road after losing their fifth in a row on home ice, needing to find two points in Nashville in a bad way. They did just that as they got timely goals, good fortune, and good goaltending on the way to a 4-1 win.
Let’s hope this wakes them up a bit.
- You still cant really like how the Capitals played at five-on-five in this game. The Predators out-attempted them by 22 attempts and out-chanced them by eight chances. The posts did a whole lot of work for the Caps but at the end of the day, this is a team that could use a couple of good bounces right now. Two points are two points. I thought the overall defensive effort was definitely tighter but it’s obvious they need to use this as a launching-off point and not as any sort of “okay, we’re back to normal” point.
- One of the big factors in the win was the play of Ilya Samsonov. He made 33 stops on 34 shots and is now weirdly 9-2-1 on the road with a .920 save percentage. I pray this is the sign we are in for a good stretch of play from Sammy as both he and the team really need some consistent great goaltending with the way they have been playing lately.
- The GOAT got back on the scoresheet as Alex Ovechkin tallied his 30th and 31st goals of the season. Ovi finally has his sixteenth 30-goal season after going scoreless for six straight games. That mark is the second-most in NHL history behind only Mike Gartner’s seventeen. Ovi is the only player in history to do it sixteen times for the same team though.
The Capitals have won four straight games on the road dating back to Jan. 28 and have outscored opponents 18-6 in that span.
— CapitalsPR (@CapitalsPR) February 16, 2022
- Really nice night from Connor McMichael. I thought he was very unlucky to not grab a goal. He led the Caps with six shots on goal, five individual scoring chances, and three individual high danger chances. His line only got one shift after the Predators tied the game which was a bit of a bummer.
- The fourth line was absolutely excellent in all three zones. The Predators had zero answers to them when they were on the ice at five-on-five. They had a plus-five scoring chance differential and a plus-two high danger chance differential as well as that really sick team goal to retake the lead in the game right after Nashville had tied it up.
- Bizarrely terrible night from Martin Fehervary as that top defense pairing for the Caps got ragdolled at five-on-five. Minus-21 shot attempt differential, minus-14 scoring chance differential, and a minus-5 high danger chance differential with the rookie defender on the ice. That’s really, really bad.
Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com and NaturalStatTrick.com.
