The Washington Capitals made the trip up to New York City to take on the Rangers for the first time this season and left with all the points.

Their 4-0 win over a Rangers team that had won eight of their last ten coming into the action sees the Caps currently in a playoff spot in the East and is their tenth victory in the month of December.

What a great team effort.

• The Caps are still playing fantastic hockey. They completely shut down the third period at five-on-five, only allowing New York a single high-danger chance and actually beating out the Rangers in scoring chances five to three. Since Thanksgiving, the Capitals at five-on-five are seeing 52.7-percent of the shot attempts, 57.6-percent of the expected goals, 54.9-percent of the scoring chances, and 57.1-percent of the high-danger chances. They have been quite literally playing like a contender and now the challenge will be to keep that up as the calendar turns to 2023 and they see more of the league’s top teams more often.
• With John Carlson out, someone on the blueline is going to need to step up and start playing more than 23 minutes a night. That someone appears to be Dmitry Orlov, who showed he is more than capable on Tuesday night but we already knew that. With Orlov on the ice at five-on-five (18:43 TOI), the Caps out-attempted New York 20 to 15, out-scoring chanced them 12 to 4, and out-high danger chanced them 4 to 2. Orlov also played 2:49 of ice time on the team’s penalty kill and another 1:55 on the power play to give him 23:27 total in the game. That was highest on the team by two full minutes over Trevor van Riemsdyk (21:27).
• I will point out that I think Matt Irwin probably had the worst game he has had since being inserted into the lineup as an injury fill-in. The often very steady Irwin made a few pretty noticeable mistakes and unfortunately that drug the game of young Alex Alexeyev down with him. With that pairing on the ice at five-on-five (11:49 TOI), the team held negative differentials in shot attempts (-14), scoring chances (-9), and high-danger chances (-2). I think Alex Ovechkin did some fantastic captain work postgame by giving Alexeyev the yellow rope for the team’s player of the game because the Caps are going to need their rookie Russian moving forward and that will only help his confidence.

Took the whole team tonight#ALLCAPS pic.twitter.com/SUCcCTFBpQ

— Washington Capitals (@Capitals) December 28, 2022

• These posts have become a bit of Sonny Milano fan show of late and that’s going to continue with this bullet. Who was the team’s best forward in terms of all the five-on-five percentages that I drone on about in these posts after every game? Milano. He has now skated in 24 games this season for the Caps and leads all regular skaters in five-on-five points per 60 (2.53) and trails just Alex Ovechkin (5.01) and TJ Oshie (4.68) in five-on-five individual high-danger chances per 60 with his 4.64. His numbers with Evgeny Kuznetsov are also great. He is great. His fit in the top six is great. We’re all great over here.
• Alex Ovechkin had just one, single shot attempt in this game and the Capitals still won it 4-0. You take those every single day, folks.
• One of the large reasons for that sort of comfortability was the play of Darcy Kuemper in net. MoneyPuck has Kuemper stopping 3.32 goals above expected in his third shutout of the season. The Caps are now the only team in the league to have two goaltenders with ten wins. What a change from last season just in terms of how confident the team has to be every single night with whoever is guarding their cage.

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