This article is over 3 years old

Another loss as goaltending proves to be deciding factor: numbers for the morning after

The Washington Capitals dropped their fourth game in a row on Sunday afternoon in a 5-2 loss to the New York Rangers. They now have just five games remaining on their schedule where they will hopefully keep losing and improve their draft pick.

That’s just the truth right now.

  • As I said in the title of this post, this loss from a purely statistical point of view came primarily due to the goaltending each team received. Natural Stat Trick had Darcy Kuemper allowing 1.55 more goals than expected and Igor Shesterkin stopping 2.28 more goals than expected. Not a great night for Darcy and a supremely good one for Igor.
  • Another game with just one shot on goal for Alex Ovechkin. He has gone three games without a marker and has just four shots on goal in those games combined.
  • The Capitals will be mathematically eliminated from playoff contention with a Florida Panthers or Pittsburgh Penguins win of any fashion on Tuesday night.

  • Connor McMichael extended his point streak in the AHL to ten games and Hershey beat the Cleveland Monsters 3-0. With the win they have clinched a first-round bye in the Calder Cup Playoffs.
  • Aliaksei Protas scored and has a new career high in goals of four. Really hope he gets more of a look in the top six next season.
  • This final bullet is going to have Wrestlemania spoilers because I just got done watching the second night and I’m mad. There were seven matches on the card. I think they picked the incorrect winner in literally every single match. How do they do that same finish in the main event…again…for like the 170th time. Should have pulled the trigger.

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

RMNB is not associated with the Washington Capitals; Monumental Sports, the NHLPA, the NHL, or its properties. Not even a little bit.

All original content on russianmachineneverbreaks.com is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International – unless otherwise stated or superseded by another license. You are free to share, copy, and remix this content so long as it is attributed, done for noncommercial purposes, and done so under a license similar to this one.

zamboni logo