The Washington Capitals snapped their six-game losing streak against the New York Rangers on Saturday and they did it in style. The Caps found the endzone for a six spot on the Rangers and came out 6-3 victors.
Goals! All of a sudden, glorious goals!
- After going through about 90 percent of the month shooting under five percent at five-on-five, the Caps finally figured out how to score goals again. This game was put to bed in the second period when they scored four times and thoroughly outplayed New York. In that second frame, the Caps out-attempted the Rangers 29 to 21, out-scoring chanced them 21 to 8, and out-high danger chanced them 13 to 4. That feels like about two or three games worth of output of late in just one period.
- TJ Oshie scored twice and recorded a Gordie Howe hat trick. It was the first Gordie of TJ’s career and it came in his 500th career game with the Caps.
- Evgeny Kuznetsov came up with a four-point game out of absolutely nowhere. The bird man didn’t have a multi-point effort in February until Saturday and only had two points in seven games in the month overall. He scored twice to give himself 11 markers on the season and claim a single-season, double-digit goal tally for the eighth time in his career.
In 500 career games with the Capitals, T.J. Oshie has recorded 349 points (175g, 174a). Since joining the Capitals ahead of the 2015-16 season, Oshie ranks second on the team in goals and power-play goals (67) and fifth in assists and points.
— CapitalsPR (@CapitalsPR) February 25, 2023
- Craig Smith played his first game as a member of the Caps. Smith fired two shots on net, had two individual scoring chances, one individual high-danger chance, and blocked a shot in 11:22 of ice time.
- Tom Wilson stayed super hot with his third goal in four games since returning to the lineup for the second time this season. He now has seven total points (5g, 2a) on the season in 12 games.
- I thought Darcy Kuemper actually had a very nice game, stopping 23 of the 26 shots he faced. Before that very late allowed goal, he was on pace to stop almost two full goals more than expected.
- Outside of Caps land, the organization’s 2022 third-round draft pick Alexander Suzdalev potted his first career WHL hat trick. Suzdalev now leads all WHL rookies by 18 points and is fifth in overall league scoring.
- This has nothing to do with the rest of this post but I was today years old when I found out that “from whence” is actually redundant but I left it in because it sounds cooler. We should go back to talking like we are all in a Shakespeare play.
Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com and NaturalStatTrick.com.
