The Washington Capitals put a ding in their draft lottery chances on Monday night when they took down the playoff-hopeful New York Islanders 5-2. In the process, they also helped the Pittsburgh Penguins out massively in terms of their postseason chances.
That all sounds terrible to me.
- Look, there are two games left in the season so, yes, I am blatantly rooting against the Capitals right now. The Caps winning games is just devaluing their first-round draft pick. Nothing more than that, especially if Alex Ovechkin is not playing. Their chances of winning the lottery and being able to select Connor Bedard went down almost a full percent (0.7) right after the win.
- The Isles tried their darndest to help the Caps out in that regard but it seems like Ilya Sorokin forgot he’s supposed to be great at goaltending. Overall in the game, New York out-attempted the Caps 94 to 49, out-scoring chanced them 41 to 20, and out-high danger chanced them 18 to 9. How they lose a game like that in the sort of race they are in is rather awful but also hilarious.
- One of the big reasons for the win was the team’s incredibly fast start. Dylan Strome and Rasmus Sandin scored goals to make the game 2-0 with just 63 seconds gone in the first period. That is the fifth-fastest two tallies to start a game in franchise history.
Dylan Strome’s 17 multi-point games this season rank second on the Capitals, trailing only Alex Ovechkin (20).
— CapitalsPR (@CapitalsPR) April 11, 2023
- Peter touched on this in his recap, but goodness was Evgeny Kuznetsov downright terrible in this game. With him on the ice at five-on-five the Caps did not record a single shot on goal, were out-attempted 20 to 3, out-scoring chanced 8 to 2, and out-high danger chanced 5 to 1. He also made a few individual plays that were just straight-up self-sabotage.
- Craig Smith had the most active game for the Caps. Smith scored a goal, assisted on another, and led the team in individual shot attempts (6), scoring chances (4), and high-danger chances (3).
- The Caps finally won a game without Alex Ovechkin this season. They are now They are now 1-7 without him and have been outscored 33 to 19 in those eight games.
Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com and NaturalStatTrick.com.
