The Washington Capitals got right back on track with two more standings points after a disappointing loss in New Jersey to kick off their season-long road trip. The Caps scored early and often against the Vancouver Canucks, securing an eventual 5-1 victory.
A rather encouraging performance.
- The Caps played a pretty perfect road game. They never let the Canucks get into the game at five-on-five really at any point in any period. Vancouver managed just four total high-danger chances spread out over 50-plus minutes under that context. Comparatively, as you can see via the heat map, the Caps produced thirteen with nine coming in their blitz of a first frame.
- I appreciated that Peter Laviolette saw that his forward lines worked in New Jersey and kept them together for this entire game as well despite the previous loss. The only trio that wasn’t very good was the one that I praised in the last numbers post which was the second line made up of Sonny Milano, Evgeny Kuznetsov, and TJ Oshie. They got beat up a little bit in their minutes defensively (minus-5 scoring chance differential). That really can’t happen when they’re getting just one defensive zone start. If that continues, the only change I’d like to see made in the short term would be flipping Anthony Mantha and Oshie.
- The big guy got on the board twice and really should have had a hat trick given the late-game circumstances. Spencer Martin became the 165th unique goaltender that Alex Ovechkin has scored against and Ovi officially passed Mark Messier (164) for the third-most goaltenders scored on in NHL history. He also broke another of Wayne Gretzky’s records.
Alex Ovechkin officially has the most road goals in NHL history. His two-goal first-period tonight gives him 403 as a visitor, one more than Wayne Gretzky had in his career.#NHLStats: https://t.co/6Nyqr1Q5vt pic.twitter.com/FW3IDEO54T
— NHL Public Relations (@PR_NHL) November 30, 2022
- Darcy Kumeper made 31 stops on 32 shots against in his eighth win of the season. It wasn’t the most challenging game of all time in net for Kuemper but he’s making a lot look easy of late. He has won his last three starts and has a 1.00 goals-against average, a .966 save percentage, and a shutout in those games. He is also shooting back up MoneyPuck’s goals saved above-expected leaderboard into the top ten among all starters with about 6 goals saved above expected on the season.
- Anthony Mantha finally got off the schneid and scored for the first time in seven games. On the goal, Lars Eller grabbed his 200th career assist and 200th career point as a member of the Caps.
- The Capitals’ next opponent will be the Seattle Kraken. The Kraken will be coming off a 9-8 road win over the Los Angeles Kings. No, you read that correctly. Nine goals to eight. Former Caps Andre Burakovsky and Daniel Sprong both scored in the game.
Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com and NaturalStatTrick.com.
