The Washington Capitals torched the Montreal Canadiens on Saturday night for an 8-4 result. The team has now scored 20 goals over their last three games.
That’s a lot of goals.
- The Caps, to put it simply, just beat up on a really bad Montreal Canadiens team. At five-on-five as a team, they held a plus-12 shot attempt differential, a plus-11 scoring chance differential, and a plus-11 high danger chance differential. I mean…they scored eight goals. Nothing else really needs to be said.
- One of those eight goals came from Alex Ovechkin as he got on the board for his 47th of the season and 777th of his career. Sam Montembeault became the 159th goaltender Ovi has scored on in his career and The Great Eight is now just one goal shy of tying Teemu Selanne for the most goals by a player aged 36 or older in NHL history.
- Massive four-point night from Anthony Mantha. He now has 15 points in his last 18 games which would translate to a 68-point pace over a full 82-game slate. It’s nice to see his good play start to get rewarded with actual results on the scoresheet.
The Capitals improve to 23-8-5 on the road this season, the highest road points percentage (.708) in the NHL.
— CapitalsPR (@CapitalsPR) April 17, 2022
- Dmitry Orlov also had a four-point game, the first of his career. Dima’s 34 points this season are a new career-high, besting his previous high of 33 set during the 2016-17 season. His twelve goals are also a career-high.
- 28 stops on 32 shots for Vitek Vanecek. He was absolutely ridiculous for some stretches but also let in some shots from pretty deep during others. Story of the season for Caps goaltending.
- The Pens lost in regulation so the Caps are now just three points behind them with two games in hand. Gonna be a close one.
Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com and NaturalStatTrick.com.
