The Washington Capitals pounced all over the Panthers in Game Three and walked away 6-1 blowout victors. The Caps are now up 2-1 in the series with another game to come in DC before they head back to Florida.
Well, we certainly loved that.
- The Panthers may have had the clear shot attempt advantage at five-on-five (plus-9), but the Caps got the jump on them in both scoring chances (plus-2) and high danger chances (plus-1). That just shows that they did a great job at keeping an offensive powerhouse to the outside. Think more Game One than Game Two.
- Ilya Samsonov let that Jonathan Huberdeau goal in and you could sense a collective “ah, here we go again” but he bounced back and was awesome for the rest of the game. He picked up his first-ever playoff win, making 29 stops on 30 shots against. Gotta go back to him now.
- Connor McMichael didn’t have the most standout game of all time but I think his inclusion in the lineup was important. It allowed the Caps to reunite their uber-successful fourth line of Johan Larsson, Nic Dowd, and Garnet Hathaway and those three dominated at five-on-five, only allowing a single Florida scoring chance while recording five of their own.
Johan Larsson recorded the primary assist on Hathaway's goal, marking his first career playoff point.
— CapitalsPR (@CapitalsPR) May 7, 2022
- Anthony Mantha was a man possessed at some points during this game. He was just straight-up awesome in a two-assist effort. You could do without the two penalties but he also drew two against Florida to even that out. He also recorded four shots on goal, six shot attempts, three hits, and a shot block.
- Alex Ovechkin got on the board with his first goal of this series. It was his 72nd career playoff goal, moving him past Bryan Trottier for the 16th-most playoff goals in NHL history. Go back and laugh at just how wide-open he was.
- One of the big reasons for the win was the play of both special teams units. The power play went 2-for-6 and the penalty kill killed off all three of Florida’s opportunities. That is simply an utter game-changer.
Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com and NaturalStatTrick.com.
