Home / Analysis / Capitals earn hard-fought road point thanks to early-game defense and late-game goaltending: numbers for the morning after

Capitals earn hard-fought road point thanks to early-game defense and late-game goaltending: numbers for the morning after

By Chris Cerullo

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November 1, 2022 7:04 am

The severely banged-up Washington Capitals wrapped up their early season road trip with a valiant 3-2 loss to the Carolina Hurricanes on Monday night. The Caps were able to grab the loser point on the back of some heroics from their goaltender and the defensive play in front of him.

Boo the shootout.

  • Another game where I didn’t really have a ton of issues with how they played at five-on-five outside of maybe the back half of the third period. The five-on-five expected goals ended 1.18 to 1.1 in favor of Carolina. The Canes seemed to fire the puck at the Caps’ net almost every time they brought it across the blueline but only recorded three high-danger chances at five-on-five through forty minutes. That’s a superb defensive effort on the road against a team that tends to bully other teams in scoring chances.
  • I have to say that I was a little concerned about the fourth line to start the season when the right partner for Nic Dowd and Garnet Hathaway seemed to be eluding the coaching staff. Then Beck Malenstyn arrived and it’s like they’ve picked up right where they left off last season. The analytics aren’t really there yet in the small, four-game sample but they literally start 90-percent of their shifts in the defensive zone.
  • Alex Ovechkin scored his 785th career goal. His NHL record 288th power-play marker puts him just 17 goals shy of passing Gordie Howe (801) for second place on the NHL’s all-time goals list and two goals shy of passing Howe’s mark for the most goals scored by a player with a single franchise (786 with Detroit).

  • You can go back only a few numbers posts to see me suggesting the Caps should break up the current first line. They were the team’s best line in this game so maybe it just took some time to build chemistry as a trio and Chris should learn some patience. With those three on the ice at five-on-five, the Caps held positive differentials in shot attempts (plus-8), scoring chances (plus-4), and high-danger chances (plus-2). Dylan Strome also scored his second goal of the season.
  • Peter Laviolette really does not like Connor McMichael on the ice this season. So much so that he tanked McMichael’s linemates’ time on ice to avoid playing him. McMichael ended up playing less than seven minutes total at all strengths, Evgeny Kuznetsov got just 8:43 at five-on-five, and Marcus Johansson similarly received just 8:46. It’s not like McMichael was good whatsoever in those minutes as I think he definitely showed a metric ton of rust. He very clearly needs to be in Hershey right now.
  • The Caps decided to take a whole ton of terrible penalties toward the end of the game and can thank Darcy Kuemper for the standings point. He was absolutely, absurdly good when they very much needed him to be. He followed up his first shutout performance in a Caps sweater with a 33-save appearance in Raleigh. His 2.15 goals saved above expected (via MoneyPuck) in the game shoots him into the top five among all starting goaltenders in the category at 6.2 total goals saved above expected. He now sits behind just Ilya Sorokin (6.3), Connor Hellebuyck (7.4), Carter Hart (9.0), and Jake Oettinger (10.1)

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

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