The Washington Capitals have opened their 2022-23 season with back-to-back losses as they fell in Toronto to the Maple Leafs and Ilya Samsonov by a final score of 3-2.

The loss was highlighted by the team’s power play being incapable of scoring. Hence, the title of this post.

• The Capitals had another slow start, a pretty great middle portion of the game, and a failed push in the third for a victory. I wasn’t mad at the overall five-on-five effort and they stuck with a very good Leafs team for the majority of the game but that’s an 0-2 start to the season for the first time in a very long time. Since 2012-13 to be exact which was the first season Adam Oates was in charge behind the bench. You don’t want to be associated with anything from those years.
• The big story is obviously the power play. The Caps are now 0-for-9 on it to start the season, continuing the major woes from last season with really zero end in sight. The Caps’ expected goals for (xGF) while up a man in this game came to .29 total. The Leafs’ penalty kill had .64 expected goals for. Yes, you read that correctly and yes, that’s another loss pretty much solely on the ineffectiveness of the power play.
• To be fair, the penalty kill also gave up another goal in rather easy fashion. They left John Tavares, who is good at hockey, wide open in front of the net for an easy tap-in marker. So, the special teams as a whole are in a world of hurt just two games into the season.

Auston Matthews nets his 46th career game-winner.

The only player with more since Matthews’ career began: Connor McDavid (48).

Matthews has played in 35 fewer games.

— Jonas Siegel (@jonassiegel) October 14, 2022

• The Caps have now not beaten the Leafs in Toronto in regulation since February of 2019. That’s not fun.
• I have the same positive note from the first game. The second line of Aliaksei Protas, Dylan Strome, and Anthony Mantha looked really good. They were the team’s only line fully above water when it came to high-danger chances at five-on-five, seeing four while on the ice to Toronto’s one.
• Charlie Lindgren was excellent in his debut. He ended up with 36 saves in the loss.

Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com and NaturalStatTrick.com.