The Washington Capitals saw their five-game win streak end on Saturday night. Washington was shut out 3-0 by Andrei Vasilevskiy and the Tampa Bay Lightning. Well, more just Andrei Vasilevskiy, but we’ll get into that.
Don’t fret, the Capitals still played just as well at five-on-five as they have the rest of this season. They just finally ran into some cold shooting and one of the best goaltenders of all time.
#NHL GameScore Impact Card for Washington Capitals on 2024-10-26:#ALLCAPS pic.twitter.com/uO7rEr4kuX
— HockeyStatCards (@hockeystatcards) October 27, 2024
- If you were coming here for some reassurance, I’ve got you. Despite the shutout loss, nothing really changed from a Capitals perspective at five-on-five. With the game in its regular state, Washington held positive differentials in shots (+10), shot attempts (+11), scoring chances (+3), and high-danger chances (+4). Per Natural Stat Trick, the expected goals in the game overall ended 2.67-1.73 in favor of the Capitals. The team is still rolling and playing Spencer Carbery’s system to a tee.
- Andrei Vasilevskiy stopped all 31 shots he faced. The big Russian netminder had not posted a save percentage above .880 in his last four starts, so he was absolutely due for a performance like this one. The shutout was the 35th of his career, tying him with Olie Kolzig….and…Braden Holtby for 37th all-time. Man, that’s not fun.
- As you can quite clearly see by the above chart, John Carlson didn’t have the best night. He was on the ice for all three goals against and Tampa Bay created six of their seven five-on-five, high-danger chances with Carlson on the ice. Early in the first period, I told Ian that it sure looked like Carlson was going to have one of those games. I don’t think any of you even need me to define “one of those games” for you. Carlson has been tremendous to start this season overall, though, so he’s allowed this one.
- Pierre-Luc Dubois really deserved one of those chances to find the back of the net. I actually think this was his strongest individual game of the season but he just received no puck luck from the hockey gods. PLD was the most active of Washington’s skaters, firing four shots on goal, and recording seven individual shot attempts, five individual scoring chances, and four individual high-danger chances. He also drew a penalty, blocked two shots, threw one hit, and went 9-5 in the faceoff dot.
- Let’s take a look down at the farm since there isn’t a ton else from this game. The Hershey Bears beat the Springfield Thunderbirds 6-2. Ivan Miroshnichenko pitched in two assists to give nine points (5g, 4a) through seven games. Miro is en fuego from the team’s third line, tied for the team lead in scoring with top-six forwards Alex Limoges (3g, 6a) and Mike Sgarbossa (1g, 8a). The three of them are tied for second in scoring among the entire AHL.
- How about some more prospect stuff? You can read about Ryan Leonard above. After a bit of a slow start, Terik Parascak has nine points (2g, 7a) in his last four games. Cole Hutson has four points (1g, 3a) through his first five college games with Boston University. Nick Kempf has been brilliant in two starts for Notre Dame, going 1-1 with a 1.53 goals-against average and a .945 save percentage. Cam Allen is leading the OHL’s Guelph Storm in scoring with eight points (1g, 7a) in 10 games. Ilya Protas has nine goals and 15 points in nine games with the Windsor Spitfires. Andrew Cristall is having the most impressive beginning to a season of them all but I’m going to save some of those details for a post I will probably be writing later today.
Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com and NaturalStatTrick.com.
