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Running on empty: numbers for the morning after

By Chris Cerullo

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January 18, 2023 7:17 am

The Washington Capitals met a well-rested Minnesota Wild team in DC for the back half of a back-to-back and it showed a little. The Wild found a short spell of good play against a tired team and used it to catapult themselves to a 4-2 victory.

Even with fatigue factored in, the Caps should be winning that game.

  • This game was not even close at five-on-five. If you hid the final score from me and showed me just the five-on-five stats I would have assumed a blowout win for the Caps. They held massively positive differentials in shot attempts (+17), scoring chances (+16), and high-danger chances (+13) but obviously, just could not find the finish necessary to make another comeback as they did in New York.
  • MoneyPuck says a lot of the difference in the game came in net. Minnesota’s Filip Gustavsson stopped 34 shots in the victory and saved 2.28 more goals than expected. On the flip side, Charlie Lindgren made 18 stops and saved 2.07 fewer goals than expected.
  • The Caps finished with 21 all-strength, high-danger chances which is their third-best, single-game total of the season. Bizarrely, they have somehow managed to lose all three of those top games despite out-high danger chancing teams 67 to 25. Suddenly the fact that Conor Sheary and Marcus Johansson are tied for second on the team in goals at 11 is making more sense.

  • The only line that came out of Tuesday’s game on the wrong end of play was Nicklas Backstrom’s. In 10:21 of five-on-five ice time with Backstrom, Sonny Milano, and Tom Wilson on the ice, the Caps were out-attempted 14 to 5, out-scoring chanced 6 to 1, and out-high danger chanced 1 to 0. They were also on the ice for two of Minnesota’s goals which as you can tell by the scoreboard was the literal difference in the game. Yikes.
  • The Alex Ovechkin and Dylan Strome combination worked yet again. With those two on the ice this season at five-on-five (342:37 TOI), the Caps see 51.4 percent of the shot attempts, 56 percent of the expected goals, 54 percent of the scoring chances, and 56.9 percent of the high-danger chances. They should simply never be separated.
  • Marcus Johansson played in his 800th career NHL Game and Trevor van Riemsdyk recorded his 100th career point.

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

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