The Washington Capitals are fighting a couple of very tough battles right now. The first of which is adapting to a completely new system under an almost entirely brand new coaching staff and the second is apparently against the hockey gods.
There is absolutely zero puck luck for a single player on the team right now. Add that that to your goaltender having a rough night and you get that 4-1 loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs.
- Watching the Capitals lose any game 4-1 is never fun but that was the most encouraging 4-1 loss I’ve seen in a long time. That was the Capitals’ best full effort of the season even if the scoreline clearly doesn’t match that. They played great defense, outside of Nick Jensen on that William Nylander goal, against one of the league’s top, high-flying squads. Toronto had just four five-on-five scoring chances in the first and third periods combined.
- One of the major reasons for the loss was Darcy Kuemper in net. Before the game had really gotten going and right in the middle of the Capitals building great momentum, Kuemper crumbled and let in three goals on the first eight shots he faced. The Capitals ended up with 20 more shots than the Leafs in the game and if Kuemper matches the effort that Joseph Woll put in at the other end of the ice, the title of this post is likely very different.
- Alex Ovechkin finally struck pay dirt this season. The Great Eight potted career goal number 823 which also was his 300th career power play goal. According to Capitals PR, the man advantage marker also was the 3,000th power-play goal in franchise history. Kinda nuts.
Ovechkin has scored 10.0 percent of the power-play goals in franchise history. That's the third-highest percentage in NHL history among players with at least 40 power-play goals with one franchise (Teemu Selanne, Anaheim: 12.20%; Steven Stamkos. Tampa Bay: 11.56%).
— CapitalsPR (@CapitalsPR) October 24, 2023
- The Great Eight ended up with quite a bevy of individual contributions in the game. To go along with his goal, he fired 14 shots on goal and recorded 17 individual shot attempts, 11 individual scoring chances, and 6 individual high-danger chances. Ovi’s career-high for shots in one game is 15, a mark he has hit twice. Once during the 2006-07 season and again during the 2015-16 campaign. Over the past three seasons prior to this one combined, Ovechkin only has one game where he recorded 17 individual shot attempts.
- They have to still be concerned about their penalty kill. Another two power play goals against for the third-worst unit in the league. That to go along with their own third-worst power play and you have a bad mix of special teams terribleness. Fixing just one of those two groups would increase their winning chances on a nightly basis.
- Anthony Mantha was the only Capitals skater in the game to not record a single individual shot attempt. His only appearances on the statsheet were one hit and one giveaway in 10:34 of ice time.
Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com and NaturalStatTrick.com.
