The Washington Capitals took their five-game winning streak into Thursday night’s matchup with the Ottawa Senators and left deserving losers. They scooped up a loose point in the end but their overall effort was less than desirable in the 4-3 overtime loss.
That was not good.
- The five-on-five numbers in this game for the Caps were straight-up atrocious. By those alone, they probably should have lost this game by more than two goals. The Sens out-attempted them 63 to 42, out-scoring chanced them 36 to 17, and out-high danger chanced them 17 to 5. Terrible, horrible, and awful. Bad. Worst game of the season type stuff.
- And the thing is, it’s not like you can point out any one player or line or defender or the goaltender. Everyone was bad. So bad that the team scored three goals and still lost and their record this season when they score three or more goals coming into Thursday was 20-1-1.
- If I had to pick the worst of the worst, it’d be Anthony Mantha. He’s now without a goal for seven-straight games and it looked like he didn’t know where he was during this game. With him on the ice at five-on-five, the Caps were out-attempted 22 to 8, out-scoring chanced 13 to 1, and out-high danger chanced 6 to 1.
Gustafsson’s 10 points since Dec. 17 rank tied for first in the NHL among defensemen (Erik Karlsson: 1g, 9a).
— CapitalsPR (@CapitalsPR) December 30, 2022
- Darcy Kuemper made 41 saves and yet still stopped half a goal fewer than expected according to MoneyPuck. Not even the goaltender who probably salvaged a point in the game was really that good. That’s when you know you have to just never speak of this game again and hope it is never repeated.
- Zero Capitals got hurt which is a highlight at this point. Marcus Johansson left the game at some stage but did return and played over ten total minutes.
- Alex Ovechkin did score career goal number 803. That was my lone spot of joy.
Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com and NaturalStatTrick.com.
