The Washington Capitals wrapped up their season-long home stand with a 4-3 overtime loss to the Florida Panthers on Wednesday. While the team built on some of the good they’ve started to show this season, they matched that good with enough bad to cost them a lead and eventually the extra overtime point.
At the end of five games in a row at Capital One Arena, the Capitals came out with a 3-1-1 record. They’ll take that. Could be a lot worse.
- This was a game that will drive a head coach crazy and I think you could see that it did in Spencer Carbery’s postgame presser. The normally verbose and engaging bench boss was shorter with his answers and directly called out some of the decisions his team made on the night. You could see a lot of the good in the Capitals’ recent game throughout the majority of regulation but they offset that good with a whole slew of individual, unforced errors that led directly to scoring chances for Florida. That’s also shown in the numbers from the game. While the Capitals controlled more of the five-on-five shot attempts (46 to 41), Florida doubled them up in five-on-five high-danger chances 12 to 6.
- Two players that had the roughest nights when it came to both silly mistakes and then getting punished for those mistakes were Alex Alexeyev and Hardy Haman Aktell. The team’s young, emergency third pairing with Trevor van Riemsdyk and Joel Edmundson both out injured, got punished at five-on-five. With Alexeyev on the ice, the Capitals were scored on twice, out-attempted 12 to 3, out-scoring chanced 6 to 0, and out-high danger chanced 4 to 0. I would bet we see something different among the Capitals defense group on Friday in New Jersey.
- Was this Connor McMichael‘s breakout game? God, I hope so. The 22-year-old center was flying around the ice the whole game and came up with his third career multi-point game. He also led the team with six shots on goal and drew a penalty in his 15:09 of ice time. I would really love for the Capitals’ staff to find a way to get him some actual power play time.
Twenty-two-year-old Connor McMichael scored his first career shorthanded goal to bring the @Capitals even.#NHLStats: https://t.co/7yZDr6a3OS pic.twitter.com/fngdQEwY1N
— NHL Public Relations (@PR_NHL) November 9, 2023
- The other standout from the forward group has to be Anthony Mantha. The much maligned big winger had a two-goal outing and, believe it or not, now is tied for second on the team in goal scoring this season with three. Let’s hope that scary puck to the head late in the game doesn’t keep him out and he can build off this momentum. Mantha has been known to be a streaky scorer so their could be goals in bunches coming if he stays in the lineup.
- No goals for Alex Ovechkin in five games now. I’m just going to keep mentioning this in these posts as a coping mechanism.
- The Capitals have now had five goals called back this season after replay interference. As a diehard Arsenal supporter, I already hate VAR with the fire of a thousand suns so having to deal with it in my other favorite sport might drive me insane.
Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com and NaturalStatTrick.com.
