The Capitals squared off with a rested Carolina Hurricanes in the back half of a back-to-back on Sunday night. Normally, that would be a giant cause for concern due to how Carolina likes to play but the Capitals found a way to squeeze out a 2-1 shootout win.
Really great, gutsy effort.
- The Hurricanes love to play with the puck and they seemingly always are in control of the pace of the game. The Capitals wrestled some of that control away from them late in the game and while Carolina did have a lot of the puck they couldn’t get to high-danger areas as the Caps were clogging shooting lanes and stacking their blueline. Carolina ended up with just four high-danger chances at five-on-five in the second and third period and a tired Capitals team leant on an in form Darcy Kuemper to deal with those. And, he did.
- Darcy Kuemper ended up with 27 stops in the win and is now 2-0 with a 1.44 goals-against average and a .952 save percentage in his last two starts. Kuemper stopped almost more than two goals than expected and is now 13-for-13 in stopping shooters in shootouts this season.
- The Capitals are now 5-0 in the second half of back-to-backs this year. At some point, that becomes less of an outlier and more something that Spencer Carbery and his staff have found out how to handle for the highest probability of earning points. You absolutely have to give them some credit there. The Capitals aren’t playing scrubs in these games either.
The Capitals have a record of 20-7-3 (.717 P%) in their last 30 road games against Carolina dating back to the 2009-10 season. Washington's 20 road wins versus the Hurricanes are the most in the NHL over that span.
— CapitalsPR (@CapitalsPR) December 18, 2023
- Alex Ovechkin looked dangerous yet again but still has no goals in his last 13 games. I know it’s tough to stay positive but I really do think he’s playing well recently and that goal is coming.
- Pretty rough night for the team’s fourth line at five-on-five. With them out there as a full unit, the Capitals saw negative differentials in shot attempts (-10), scoring chances (-5), and high-danger chances (-2). According to NaturalStatTrick, the Capitals did not record a single five-on-five shot attempt in their minutes. I would really like to see something else tried on the wings of Nic Dowd.
- I really liked seeing Carbery place so much faith in Connor McMichael in this game. In the final minute it was McMichael’s line sent out to try and win the game and then in the first shift of overtime McMichael was again out there alongside Evgeny Kuznetsov and John Carlson. McMichael skated 19:34 overall in the victory. More of that, please.
Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com and NaturalStatTrick.com.
