The Washington Capitals hosted the New York Islanders at Capital One Arena on Wednesday night and it wasn’t the prettiest hockey game in the world. Just two total goals between the two sides in regulation brought things to overtime and eventually a shootout which New York prevailed in.
At least the OT period was fun.
- The Caps had the better of the Isles in the first two periods of the game, taking it to them in all the usual categories we go over in this post. Then the third started and they just collapsed. They had one single shot in the first 15 minutes of the period. At five-on-five in the final regulation frame, the Isles out-attempted the Caps 24 to 7, out-scoring chanced them 9 to 2, and out-high danger chanced them 5 to 1. A pretty pitiful effort to close out the game on home ice.
- Alex Ovechkin ended up with just one shot on goal and it came during three-on-three overtime. That about sums up the game overall. When Ovi isn’t producing in a game the Caps find it really hard to win.
- Conor Sheary scored the team’s only goal and it was his 15th of the year. No Caps player other than Ovi has hit the 20-goal mark and only Sheary, Dylan Strome (18), and TJ Oshie (19) have joined The Great Eight in the 15-goal club.
Sheary's current four-game point streak is one game shy of matching his career long of five games, which he has accomplished twice with Washington (12/23/22 – 1/3/23: 1g, 7a; 12/10/21 – 12/19/21: 2g, 4a).
— CapitalsPR (@CapitalsPR) March 30, 2023
- I said in the recap that I thought Alex Alexeyev had a great individual game and the stats back that up. With big number 27 on the ice five-on-five, the Caps saw positive differentials in both scoring chances (+4) and high-danger chances (+2). It’s really not a stretch to say he has been the team’s best defender since he started playing regularly at the beginning of March.
- There were a ton of blocked shots in this game. Alexeyev (4), Nic Dowd (4), Trevor van Riemsdyk (4), Rasmus Sandin (3), Aliaksei Protas (2), Martin Fehervary (2), and Nick Jensen (2) all blocked more than one.
- Darcy Kuemper was pretty great outside of the goal he allowed to Pierre Engvall that he absolutely needs to have. Natural Stat Trick had him stopping 1.26 more goals than expected on the night. He made 28 stops in total.
Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com and NaturalStatTrick.com.
