The Washington Capitals hosted the lowly Columbus Blue Jackets for Gr802 Night at Capital One Arena on Tuesday. The night started off festive and full of smiles. It did not end that way.
Ouch.
- Look, the Caps didn’t necessarily play badly in that game at five-on-five. In fact, the stats had the matchup slightly tilted in the Caps’ favor in most of the categories we look at in this post series for every game. It’s just that only slightly beating out the Columbus Blue Jackets at home this season isn’t exactly something to brag about. They came into this game on a three-game losing streak and had lost eight of their last ten overall.
- The seven goals the Blooj scored were their most in a single game this season. The first time they hit the extra point on the touchdown. A team that is a front-runner in the Connor Bedard sweepstakes put up their best offensive output of the season against the Caps.
- I guess the biggest bright spot as he has been so many times this season was Alex Ovechkin. Ovi scored the 820th goal of his career and his 40th goal of the season. He now has the most 40-goal seasons in NHL history after passing Wayne Gretzky.
- Charlie Lindgren has now let in 16 goals in his three March starts. In this game, MoneyPuck had him stopping 3.47 fewer goals than expected. That is a terrible, terrible game.
- Three players have double digits in points for the Caps in March. They are Dylan Strome (13), Ovechkin (12), and Rasmus Sandin (12). All three added to their totals in this game. Nice to see Strome producing like that.
- It will be no shock that the team’s best line at five-on-five featured Aliaksei Protas. With that fourth line on the ice, the Caps held positive differentials in shot attempts (+5), scoring chances (+4), and high-danger chances (+4). They were also on the ice for a Caps goal and did not see one from Columbus.
Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com and NaturalStatTrick.com.
