The Washington Capitals came into Friday night’s game against the Nashville Predators looking to win both halves of a back-to-back. Looking is all they would end up doing as they fell to the Preds 3-2 due to a late third-period tally.
Not good enough at all.
- The Capitals had eight more shots than the Predators at five-on-five and the Preds only had 19 total. As you can see by the heat map though, the Caps let Nashville run roughshod over them in terms of high-danger chances in very key areas in the defensive zone and didn’t really create many of their own. Despite the shot discrepancy, Nashville finished top in five-on-five high-danger chances 15 to 9. That’s not good.
- None of the Caps got it worse than the first line. That’s evidenced by Conor Sheary‘s numbers. During his 16:07 of five-on-five ice time, the Caps were out-attempted 20 to 9, out-scoring chanced 9 to 4, and out-high danger chanced 8 to 1. I’m putting this down to the whole Ovechkin-Kuznetsov connection being an absolute liability thing we’ve discussed after recent games. They simply should not play together. It’s very easy.
- Alex Ovechkin had a pretty quiet game by his recent standards. He finished with twelve shot attempts and four shots on target but also with zero high-danger chances at all strengths. That’s not a recipe for team success.
Erik Gustafsson recorded the primary assist on Aube-Kubel's goal, his 18th assist of the season. Gustafsson has recorded 14 points (6g, 8a) in his last 10 games, dating back to Dec. 17. During that span, only Erik Karlsson (1g-14a–15p) has more points among NHL defensemen.
— CapitalsPR (@CapitalsPR) January 7, 2023
- Sonny Milano did score his seventh goal of the season which was his 100th career NHL point. I’m afraid Sonny is going to leave the lineup soon despite producing the way he has.
- The Caps went 0-for-3 on the power play and it didn’t look good to me at all. I honestly don’t think it has been consistently good all season as a cohesive unit. Sure, they’ve had hot stretches where maybe some sharp shooting and bounces go their way for some time but, in my opinion, it really hasn’t been too impressive overall. Right now it ranks dead middle in the league (16th) at 22.4% efficiency.
- Despite the highlight reel goal, I didn’t love Nicolas Aube-Kubel taking two minor penalties. I don’t think you can realistically expect him to be scoring many more goals like that, so he’d be one of my first choices to leave the lineup once Tom Wilson is ready to rock.
Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com and NaturalStatTrick.com.
