The Washington Capitals are winners of five games in a row. With their 7-3 victory on the road over the Chicago Blackhawks they showcased a lot of what they have been doing well lately and…oh yeah some milestone thing happened.
800 is a lot of anything.
- I don’t think the Caps ever really got out of a jogging pace in this game and they still dominated what is a truly terrible Blackhawks team. They out-chanced Chicago 37 to 20 at five-on-five and their best period in terms of scoring chance differential was the third (+7) where they were up big for the majority of it. The Caps are in some sort of groove right now and I think that on top of the big shiny number thing happening meant the Blackhawks just kinda gave up.
- Let’s get to the big guy. Alex Ovechkin scored career goals 798, 799, and 800 to become the third player in league history to record 800 career goals. Ovi hit the mark in his 1,305th career game, making him the second-fastest to reach the milestone in NHL history behind only Wayne Gretzky at 1,116 games. The Great Eight’s 29th career hat trick also put him past Marcel Dionne and Bobby Hull (28) for the sixth-most hat tricks in NHL history.
- 37-year-old Ovi now has 20 goals in 31 games this season which has him tied for fifth in the league overall and six goals behind Connor McDavid for the league lead. There is no other player in the top ten this season in terms of goals scored that is even 30 years old. The milestone hat trick plus an assist put him on pace for just a shade under 53 goals and 90 total points over a full 82-game schedule. I don’t know about anyone else, but to me, it doesn’t even feel like he’s hit one of those superpowered grooves he is capable of a handful of times a season. Look out, league.
- I thought Nicolas Aube-Kubel had a pretty noticeable, great game in his first outing since November 19. To be fair, at this point, I’m not sure who wouldn’t next to Nic Dowd and Garnet Hathaway. That line was absurdly dominant again while still receiving zero offensive zone starts at five-on-five. With NAK on the ice at five-on-five, the Caps scored two goals and held positive differentials in shot attempts (+13), scoring chances (+8), and high-danger chances (+5). NAK himself recorded six individual shot attempts, five individual scoring chances, two individual high-danger chances, and tallied his first two points with the Caps.
- Charlie Lindgren is 5-0 on this win streak with a 1.81 goals-against average and a .938 save percentage. He is making every single stop you would want him to make right now. Even in this blowout, he still managed to stop almost half a goal more than expected per MoneyPuck. He is letting the Caps make sure Darcy Kuemper is completely healthy once he returns and that’s a supreme luxury.
- I have to give more praise to the Erik Gustafsson-John Carlson pairing. They were downright unplayable not too long ago (in a very bad way) and have almost entirely turned that around of late. In over 11 minutes together with them on the ice together at five-on-five in this game, the Caps out-attempted the Blackhawks 15 to 5, out-scoring chanced them 7 to 1, and only gave up a single high-danger chance.
Full Coverage of Alex Ovechkin’s 800th Goal
Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com and NaturalStatTrick.com.
