The Washington Capitals hung on for two periods on the road in Buffalo but the third was their worst and led to another blowout loss. We keep hearing that when the Capitals lose, they lose big…and that’s just straight-up facts.
A tough back-to-back with travel against the Penguins and Hurricanes now awaits them. Oof.
- That stats from the game really don’t tell the whole story because the Capitals brought the game “back” at five-on-five with some garbage time shifts after the game had already been decided. They got blitzed in the third period and looked uninterested in playing any defense once they figured the win was out of the question. This is the 11th game of the season where they’ve given up six or more goals. During Alex Ovechkin’s tenure with the club, they’ve only given up six or more goals in more games during a season back during his rookie campaign in 2005-06 (12).
- I put none of this game on Charlie Lindgren although his stats are going to take a big hit because of it. He stopped this from being 10-2 with five or six absolutely incredible saves. He ended up with 25 stops on 31 shots and Darcy Kuemper stopped all four shots he faced in his relief appearance.
- Alex Ovechkin picked up an assist on Dylan Strome’s power-play goal. The helper tied him with Sergei Fedorov (696) for the second-most assists by a Russian player in league history. Evgeni Malkin is at the top of that list with 794 assists.
John Carlson tallied his team-leading 39th assist of the season on Strome's power-play goal, marking his sixth point (3g, 3a) in his last six games. Carlson has recorded three assists in two games against Buffalo this season.
— CapitalsPR (@CapitalsPR) April 3, 2024
- One of the lone bright spots in the loss was that I thought Alex Alexeyev truly had one of his most dynamic games wearing a Capitals sweater. He literally should have had four or five assists if his teammates could finish into empty nets. He still skated the least of the team’s defensemen though (16:33).
- Ivan Miroshnichenko is sort of being pulled all over the lineup in recent games and I think it really is doing nothing to help him. He gets the top-line assignment and then soon after gets demoted to the line we know plays the least at five-on-five. For a player that seems to thrive on confidence, not sure what the plan is there. A large portion of his ice time in the loss (15:01) came when he was getting long shifts after the game was already over. Might we see him back in Hershey before the regular season ends?
- Of the six teams that are really left in the hunt for playoff spots in the Eastern Conference, the Capitals are the only team to not have picked up any points in their last game. All of a sudden, the Pittsburgh Penguins and New York Islanders are on winning streaks and right back in the hunt.
Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com and NaturalStatTrick.com.
