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Blues beat Capitals 5-2 in Marcus Johansson’s return

By Peter Hassett

 2 Comments

March 22, 2022 9:26 pm

The Washington Capitals did not play their best game of the season against the St Louis Blues. The Caps lost track of the game in the second period and never caught up.

Evgeny Kuznetsov scored first, getting perhaps a favorable deflection off Colton Parayko’s stick. Brandon Saad returned fire, carving up defenders Orlov and Carlson on his way. Anthony Mantha set up Tom Wilson for a rush goal, but Ryan O’Reilly found a rebound on the power play to tie it up after one period.

The Blues dominated the second period and were rewarded for it with two goals — one from ex-Cap Nathan Walker and another from Brayden Schenn. The Blues added an empty-netter with thirty seconds left in rego.

Caps lose 5-2.

  • The Capitals did not play their best game on this Tuesday night. They seemed a bit too casual on defense. They didn’t much offense — with or without quality, and in the second period they didn’t seem to be meaningfully competing at all.
  • I kinda don’t wanna name names though. With a few exceptions, the Caps played badly (Jensen), or they played well but made conspicuous mistakes (Orlov and Carlson).
  • The Capitals dressed seven defensemen for this game, but the last one was just for decoration. Matt Irwin did not skate a shift. CapFriendly says he earns $3,750 for the day. Not bad work if you can get it.
  • Of the defenders who did play, Michal Kempny did relatively good as far as shot-attempt percentage goes but squandered it with two not-great penalties.
  • Goalie Vitek Vanecek made this fantastic save in the second period.

  • Then a few shifts later, he coughed up a rebound that get ROR a layup goal. That’s the duality of Washington’s goaltending right now. Welp, they’re committed to it.
  • Just putting a number on this before Chris does: the Capitals owned 23 percent of the expected goals in the second period. So the Blues owned the other 77 percent. That’s one of the worst periods of the season.
  • Marcus “MoYo” Johansson was just fine. The nightmare scenario for adding Johansson is that he would suck the offense out of the Caps. And while the Caps had no offense in the back forty of this game, correlation ain’t causation.
  • John Carlson bobblehead, eh? Welp. See you later.

Eh, can’t win ’em all. If the Caps had Oshie and TVR in action, I don’t think the Blues would have run roughshod over ’em.

Sabres on Friday. See you there.

Headline photo: Elizabeth Kong

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