The Washington Capitals dropped a Sunday night road visit to Nashville 3-1 as the Predators played opportunist and pounced at some important moments of the game. The Capitals have now lost two straight headed into North Carolina to take on a rested Hurricanes team on Sunday.
One goal? This again? Ugh.
- The turning point of this game happened after the Capitals put together a bunch of great offensive shifts in a row during the second period only to be met by a bad bounce and Philip Tomasino putting away a breakaway chance against the run of play. In that second, the Caps doubled up Nashville in five-on-five shot attempts (24 to 12) and recorded 10 overall high-danger chances to Nashville’s one. Coming out of that frame down a goal is brutal but we know how badly this Capitals team can struggle to score goals. Unfortunate.
- TJ Oshie was the lone goal scorer, tallying his first since his return from injury. Per Capitals PR, the goal marked Oshie’s 182nd career goal with the team. He passed Dale Hunter and Michal Pivonka (181) on the Capitals’ all-time goals list and tied Dennis Maruk (182) for the 10th-most goals in franchise history.
- Alex Ovechkin is now without a goal for 12-straight games. Kinda unfathomable and I’m honestly just bringing it up to see if we can find some sort of reverse jinx here or something. Ovi had 14 total shot attempts in the game with six finding Juuse Saros’ equipment.
Alex Ovechkin recorded the secondary assist on Oshie’s goal, his 12th assist of the season. Ovechkin’s 17 points are tied with Tom Wilson and Dylan Strome for the team lead.
— CapitalsPR (@CapitalsPR) December 17, 2023
- Another pretty bad night for the fourth line. I have not thought that three-man combo has worked from the start and still feel that way. With them on the ice at five-on-five, the Capitals recorded just one shot attempt and had zero scoring chances.
- Aliaksei Protas is a gem and the Capitals were at their best five-on-five with him on the ice. They posted positive differentials in shot attempts (+8) and scoring chances (+2) during his minutes.
- In brighter news, the Hershey Bears stomped out the Laval Rocket last night. Ivan Miroshnichenko scored again and Hendrix Lapierre had a three-assist game.
Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com and NaturalStatTrick.com.
