The Washington Capitals dropped their first home game this season on Friday night since the very first game on their schedule. The struggling Pittsburgh Penguins came into DC on no rest and beat a fresh Caps team, 4-2.
Washington has lost three in a row and four of their last five at Capital One Arena when the Pens come to visit. That’s terribly not fun.
#NHL GameScore Impact Card for Washington Capitals on 2024-11-08:#ALLCAPS pic.twitter.com/BYpXJ0uK47
— HockeyStatCards (@hockeystatcards) November 9, 2024
- The Capitals bizarrely played a great second period that did not match their efforts in the other two periods. During the second frame at five-on-five, they recorded 32 shot attempts, 18 scoring chances, and 12 high-danger chances. In the other two periods combined, they recorded 19 shot attempts, seven scoring chances, and two high-danger chances. Pittsburgh was the team playing on no rest, so none of that makes sense to me.
- Really rough night for Martin Fehervary as he was the only Capitals skater on the ice for all three of Pittsburgh’s non-empty net goals. The Pens had poor Marty hemmed in his own zone for a lot of this game, recording 18 of their 29 five-on-five shots with him on the ice. We should see Jakob Chychrun back very soon so Fehervary should be able to slide back into a more comfortable role.
- The Capitals have the league’s worst power play and it’s not even very close. They are 4-for-46 on the season and over three percent worse than the St. Louis Blues who are ranked 31st in the league. They went 0-for-3 against Pittsburgh and are now 2-for-their-last-40. I’m not sure what the answer here is. They somehow got it together last season so we’ll see. I think, assistant coaching-wise, it’s concerning that this same thing is happening two years in a row, though.
Rasmus Sandin scores his first goal of the season to cut the deficit to 2-1. All six of Sandin's points this season (1g, 5a) have come in the last eight games.
— CapitalsPR (@CapitalsPR) November 9, 2024
- The third line scored a goal but they also had a very rough night. With that line on the ice at five-on-five, the team posted negative differentials in shot attempts (-7), scoring chances (-5), and high-danger chances (-2). I’m not sure what the answer is to get that line some more consistency. Washington was looking for Hendrix Lapierre to take a leap this season and he’s not giving that to them yet.
- I was a little concerned watching Matt Roy in his second game back in the lineup. He seemed to get beat pretty bad a few times reaching for plays instead of just moving his feet. I assume he’s still working back up to game pace from his injury. He played 16:55 of five-on-five ice time, which ranked second on the team behind Fehervary (17:28).
- Washington’s second line needs to see more ice in all contexts of the game. They are absurdly dominant this season and that was no different in this game. With Pierre-Luc Dubois on the ice at five-on-five, Washington out-attempted Pittsburgh 17-9, out-scoring chanced them 13-2, and out-high danger chanced them 7-1.
Numbers thanks to Hockey-Reference, NaturalStatTrick, and HockeyStatCards.
