The Washington Capitals got their 2022 playoff run off to a fantastic start as they went into the Presidents’ Trophy winning Florida Panthers’ home barn and came away with a 4-2 Game One victory. Oh boy, that was ridiculously encouraging.
Do that fifteen more times, please.
- Where has this team been? Just utter domination of Florida over the first forty minutes, unfortunately not on the scoreboard but who cares because eventually, that changed. MoneyPuck’s Deserve To Win O’Meter says the Caps win that game 78.8-percent of the time over 1,000 simulations. They held the high-flying Panthers to just seven high danger chances at five-on-five.
- Is there anything that just immediately brings more joy than a successful Evgeny Kuznetsov breakaway in the playoffs? Kuzy picked the puck up after Alex Ovechkin’s great steal in neutral and beat Sergei Bobrovsky for his 28th career postseason marker. It was also the fourth time number 92 has scored on Bob in the playoffs after beating him three times in 2018 when the Russian netminder was with Columbus.
- Vitek Vanecek was downright excellent for the large majority of the game, coming up with 30 stops on 32 shots. I’d like to see a save on Sam Bennett’s goal but he more than made up for it with some of the saves in tight late in the game.
Alex Ovechkin has recorded 46 points (25g, 21a) in his last 45 playoff games, dating back to the start of the 2018 Stanley Cup Playoffs.
— CapitalsPR (@CapitalsPR) May 4, 2022
- Definitely have to worry about Tom Wilson because the Caps rely on him so much at every single strength and in all three zones. He ended up with only 1:31 of ice time and it’s not fun to hear he tried to test out whatever was bothering him and decided against giving it a go. He opened the scoring in this one with his 14th career in the playoffs.
- Conor Sheary definitely jumped off the screen with how active and around the puck he was. It shows in the analytics as well as the Caps with him on the ice at five-on-five, held a plus-11 shot attempt differential, a plus-2 scoring chance differential, and a plus-4 high danger chance differential.
- Alex Ovechkin looked entirely fine to me and was probably unlucky to only come away with one point from the game. Ovi fired a team-leading nine total shot attempts.
Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com and NaturalStatTrick.com.
