The Washington Capitals are no longer winless. The Caps found their first two points of the season via a 3-1 victory on home ice over the Montreal Canadiens.
They not only erased their zero in the win column but also scored their first power play goal of the season. Progress.
- The Caps found their bounce-back game and never really let the Habs get a sniff of controlling the action. They jumped out to that 3-1 lead and completely shut the door in the third period to secure the two points. Neither team had a single high-danger chance at five-on-five in the final frame which just shows how well the Caps sat back and defended. Not always the most advisable but clearly worked against a tired, young, Canadiens team.
- Good to see Darcy Kuemper grab his first win in net as a member of the Capitals. Like I said in the recap, I didn’t love the goal he gave up to Nick Suzuki but he completely shut the door after that. He ended up with 21 stops total on 22 shots.
- I’m not sure how I feel about the new first line of Alex Ovechkin, Dylan Strome, and Connor Brown just yet. I think Strome might be the right center for Ovi right now but I’d personally shoot Aliaksei Protas up a couple of lines and get his energy and big frame with those two. That’s nothing against Brown but I’m not sure his fit with Ovi has exactly worked as planned. Through three games (very small sample size reminder) the Caps have a 59.5-percent expected goals-for percentage with Protas on the ice at five-on-five which leads the team and he has kept that going on two separate lines.
Alex Ovechkin recorded the primary assist on the Capitals' power play goal. Ovechkin, the NHL's all time leader in power play goals (285), has also tallied 244 power play assists, the seventh most among active players.
— CapitalsPR (@CapitalsPR) October 16, 2022
- John Carlson is pointless through three games. Again, remember this is just three games but those three games have not been great for John. I think there needs to be a shift made in the defensive pairings. Orlov up with Carlson and Fehervary down with Jensen. I wouldn’t want to break up Gustafsson and TVR as, in my opinion, they’ve actually been the best of the six so far.
- The power play finally got off the schneid with a goal from TJ Oshie. I still didn’t think it looked that great overall but I do believe Marcus Johansson should stay on the top unit based on his zone-entry abilities alone.
- The Caps signed forward Sonny Milano during the game. Milano, who scored 14 goals and 34 points in 66 games for Anaheim last season, is a really interesting statistical case. Micah McCurdy’s HockeyViz tells us Milano had a net plus-13 impact on five-on-five play for the Ducks.
Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com and NaturalStatTrick.com.
