The Washington Capitals found the end zone against the Florida Panthers ahead of Super Bowl LIX this weekend. The Caps put six goals on the Panthers, coming away with a 6-3 win on home ice.
Definitely not a perfect performance, but a great win nonetheless.
NHL GameScore Impact Card for Washington Capitals on 2025-02-04: pic.twitter.com/49VO046peV
— HockeyStatCards (@hockeystatcards) February 5, 2025
- The five-on-five stats say the Capitals got dominated by Florida, which I really don’t feel was the story of this game. There were certainly some poorer periods, especially after Nic Dowd’s goal, but I never thought the Caps were getting taken to the cleaners. At five-on-five, from a purely statistical POV, with none of my eye test bias factored in, they were only credited with 12 scoring chances and three high-danger chances. Florida recorded 28 scoring chances and 11 high-danger chances.
- Alex Ovechkin beat the regulation buzzer and scored his 25th goal of the season and the 878th of his career. He is now just 17 goals away from breaking Wayne Gretzky’s all-time goals record. Ovi skated 20:22 of ice time, which was second on the team only to John Carlson (23:15).
- Andrew Mangiapane received plaudits from Spencer Carbery and his teammates postgame for his two-point night (1g, 1a). Mangiapane snapped a nine-game pointless streak with his first-period goal and later set up Dowd for the game-winning marker. He is on pace for 17 goals this season.
Protas' 13 multi-point games are tied with Dylan Strome for the most on Washington. https://t.co/vNg2bnlX2a
— Capitals PR (@CapitalsPR) February 5, 2025
- Logan Thompson made 30 saves on 33 shots and improved his season record to 24-2-4 with a 2.15 goals-against average and a .923 save percentage. Per MoneyPuck, Thompson stopped 0.41 more goals than expected. He is 2-0 against the Panthers this year.
- Washington has just two games left before the 4 Nations Face-Off break. They are still first in points percentage in the NHL (.726) with their 35-11-7 record.
- Per the team, the Caps extended their home-point streak to 14 games with the win, which is the third-longest home-point streak in franchise history. The longest is a 17-game run during the 2016-17 campaign.
- Matthew Tkachuk was a minus-2 despite scoring a goal.
Numbers thanks to Hockey-Reference, NaturalStatTrick, and HockeyStatCards.
