The Washington Capitals came up just short against the Vegas Golden Knights on Tuesday, falling in overtime 3-2. The Caps fought hard enough to earn a point in the standings in the back half of a back-to-back.

Just by reading this post you may risk injury and have to head to the locker room to get checked out.

• The Capitals were headed toward another pretty good game overall at five-on-five until they ran out of gas in the third period and tried to retreat into a defensive shell. Vegas pounced on that and were able to come up with the 2-2 tying goal. The Caps were only able to record three five-on-five scoring chances in the final frame and did not record any high-danger chances.
• Seven. The number of roster players currently out with an injury. That does not include Garnet Hathaway and Matt Irwin who seemed to need repairs of some sort during this game but were able to return, unlike Beck Malenstyn. The Caps are apparently going to lead the league in lost man games by about eleven billion.
• Dylan Strome had a two-point night and is now tied with Alex Ovechkin for the team lead in scoring at nine points. What a savvy, smart, and crucial pickup he has turned out to be. He needs to be extended.

Ovechkin is two points shy of passing Adam Oates and Sidney Crosby (1,420) for the 18th-most points in NHL history.

— CapitalsPR (@CapitalsPR) November 1, 2022

• Aliaksei Protas should not be getting the least minutes on the team at 10:43. If performance is supposed to correlate to getting more minutes and age isn’t the sole factor, he should be playing a lot more than most.
• I’ve been championing Trevor van Riemsdyk for an increased role for a long time and he’s gotten it recently due to John Carlson‘s injury and has been superb. In 18:34 of five-on-five minutes with TVR on the ice, the Caps had positive differentials in shot attempts (plus-12), scoring chances (plus-1), and high-danger chances (plus-2). TVR also scored his first goal of the season. He should stay in that role even when Carlson is healthy.
• The first line was absolutely missing in this game. Outside of Protas and the injured Malenstyn, Ovechkin was the player to play the least at five-on-five (12:27) and that’s likely due to how ineffective the line was. Evgeny Kuznetsov has yet to score this season and has just six points in ten games. He hasn’t looked like the motivated player he was last season just yet.

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