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Heading into a very long break on a high note: numbers for the morning after

By Chris Cerullo

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February 1, 2023 6:24 am

The Washington Capitals stumbled a bit on the way there but eventually put a full two-point performance together against the Columbus Blue Jackets on Tuesday. The 4-3 overtime victory came in the team’s last game for quite some time.

Can they just blow bad teams out more often, please?

  • I don’t really love how competitive Columbus was in this game. I don’t think they had the better overall scoring chances or anything but they had far too much of the puck, especially in the third when they were down a goal. They finished that final frame with 29 five-on-five shot attempts to the Caps’ 19. That’s kinda asking for overtime a little bit and luckily Evgeny Kuznetsov found a way to secure the full two points.
  • Charlie Lindgren made 31 stops on 34 shots. It was his first win in the month of January in just his third start. I’m definitely interested to see how the goaltending workload is handled moving forward.
  • Trevor van Riemsdyk scored twice in the game to record his first-ever, multi-goal outing and set a new single-season career high in goals with six. Via Caps PR, Capitals defensemen have combined for 28 goals this season, which is tied for the fourth-highest total in the NHL.

  • Um, Dmitry Orlov had a downright horrendous evening. In his 22:09 of five-on-five ice time, the Caps were out-attempted 37 to 10, outshot 18 to 4, out-scoring chanced 16 to 2, and out-high danger chanced 6 to 1. His timing has seemed severely off to me as of late. I would not be surprised if he’s nursing some sort of injury because that’s god-awful.
  • Another game where the Caps got absolutely nothing from Anthony Mantha. One shot attempt and one hit in 12:37 of ice time.
  • The Caps now head into the All-Star break and then have a weird schedule quirk where their bye week comes directly after. That means we won’t see Caps hockey again until February 11 on the road in Boston.

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

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