The Washington Capitals squared off with the Ottawa Senators on Thursday in a battle of North American capital cities. Things looked great for the Caps after twenty minutes and that’s also when they decided to stop playing.
The Sens scored five unanswered and came out 5-2 victors.
- I feel like you don’t need me to tell you what went wrong in this one. The Caps came out guns blazing and had a really great first period with tons of puck possession in the offensive zone, crisp passing, and efficient power play work. Reverse all of that for the rest of the game. They had twelve shots on goal in the first and then just twelve shots on goal for the rest of the game.
- The Caps made big changes to their defensive unit before this game. They moved Dmitry Orlov up to play with John Carlson and Martin Fehervary down to play with Nick Jensen. With Orlov and Carlson on the ice at five-on-five, the Caps were out-scoring chanced 16 to 4 and out high-danger chanced 7 to 0. Uh, yea. That’s not gonna work.
- If I told you to guess which two players in the lineup played the least in the game you would probably get the correct answers on your first two guesses because that’s how predictable things seem to be with the Caps in recent years. Connor McMichael (8:33) and Aliaksei Protas (9:06) are the answers.
OTT led the #Caps 23-10 in slot shots on net, 12-5 in scoring chances off the rush and 7-3 in odd man rushes, per Sportlogiq. So, yeah.
— Tarik El-Bashir (@Tarik_ElBashir) October 21, 2022
- It’s not like McMichael really played well because, in fact, he might have had statistically his worst game ever for the Caps. The thing is, he got into a fight for two seconds, and that somehow likely matters more than if he actually played well. The Caps were out-attempted 18 to 3 in his five-on-five minutes.
- Darcy Kuemper was absolutely unreal in the third period. He faced 20 shots in that final frame alone and did his best to keep the Caps in it until he was pulled for an extra attacker. He ended up with 39 stops overall and at least six of them required superstar-level stuff.
- I said this in my recap but I never want to see that Alex Ovechkin, Lars Eller, and Conor Sheary first line ever again. Here were Ovi’s individual counting stat numbers at five-on-five: 0 points, 0 shots, 0 shot attempts, 0 scoring chances, 0 high-danger chances, one minor penalty, three hits.
Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com and NaturalStatTrick.com.
