The Washington Capitals put us all on a roller coaster of emotions on Wednesday night but they ended up with a regulation victory at the end of it. At this point, they’ll take what they can get even if it came mostly on the back of some hot shooting.
Think of it as the good guys picking up a receipt from their great effort on Tuesday that resulted in no points. Pucks went in the right net more than the wrong one.
- Look, the Capitals got out-chanced at five-on-five in the final forty minutes 29 to 9. That is terrible and unsustainable. Yet, they won. As Peter said in his recap, take that and run with it. Did we still see some of the same inexplicably bad individual defensive miscues from veteran roster players? Yes, definitely. Did they play an overall good team game? Nope. Did they win? Yes, and that’s most important as the team cannot afford to dig an insurmountable hole as they get through this feeling-out stretch playing a new system.
- Dylan Strome finished second on the team in scoring last season with 65 points (23g, 42a) in 81 games. After his two-goal outing against the Devils, he now has four goals in six games to start this year which is a team-leading mark. Strome isn’t going to stay at a 55-goal pace the whole year but matching or improving upon his production from 2022-23 would be awesome for a player the Capitals picked up after the Chicago Blackhawks literally gave him up for free.
- I’ve been very hard on Anthony Mantha’s game to start the campaign so I have to mention him when he plays like he did on Wednesday. He was probably the Capitals’ best forward over the full 60 minutes as he put up a goal and an assist and was overall just very engaged. A game like that just makes it more frustrating to watch him put up those consistently poor performances in games prior. Hopefully, this is a jumping-off point for a Mantha hot streak and he’ll get to stick with more offensively-leaning teammates, higher up in the lineup. Because I think it’s very obvious he can’t play that fourth-line role.
The @Capitals are the first team in NHL history to shut out their opponent by 3+ goals in the first period, then get shut out by 4+ goals in the second period, then shut out their opponent by 3+ goals again in the third period.
— OptaSTATS (@OptaSTATS) October 26, 2023
- Hunter Shepard got his first NHL start and as you read in the first bullet, got thrown straight into the fire of scoring chance after scoring chance after scoring chance. He bent pretty hard in the second period with four straight goals allowed to those chances but did not break in the third when the Capitals really needed him to hold steady. Shepard finished with 18 saves in his first NHL win.
- Evgeny Kuznetsov’s line got positively pummelled. With Kuznetsov out there at five-on-five, the Capitals saw massively negative differentials in shot attempts (-11), scoring chances (-13), and high-danger chances (-5). TJ Oshie was a third of that line, and I honestly don’t think I can remember watching him play worse in a Capitals uniform. Oshie’s viability is something the team should be keeping a serious eye on this year.
- After a bunch of doom and gloom about him potentially being “cooked” from some in the hockey world to start the season, Alex Ovechkin is again leading the Capitals in scoring with five points (2g, 3a) from six games. The Great Eight potted his 824th career goal into an empty net to seal the win and added his 666th career assist on Strome’s first goal. 666th career assist…against the Devils…less than a week from Halloween. Spooky.
Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com and NaturalStatTrick.com.
