The Washington Capitals are headed back home after winning two of three out west in California. They cruised to a 5-1 victory over the Sharks on Saturday evening in their final Pacific Division test of the season.
Good win against a team they definitely should be beating.
NHL GameScore Impact Card for Washington Capitals on 2025-03-15: pic.twitter.com/YtVnPCOP8X
— HockeyStatCards (@hockeystatcards) March 15, 2025
- The Capitals allowed just 24 five-on-five shot attempts from the Sharks in the win, the second-fewest they’ve allowed in a game this season. San Jose recorded 12 of those attempts in the third period when they had already been down 3-0 for the majority of the game. Great defense against a bad team.
- Alex Ovechkin scored his 887th career goal, moving just eight goals shy of passing Wayne Gretzky for sole possession of the NHL’s all-time goals record. Ovechkin’s goal was his first against Georgi Romanov, the 182nd different goaltender he has scored on in his career. Only Leon Draisaitl (49), William Nylander (37), Mark Scheifele (35), and Kyle Connor (35) have more goals than Ovechkin (34) this season. They have all played at least 15 more games than him.
- Trevor van Riemsdyk scored his first goal in 145 games. The Capitals scored 505 goals in between his two goals. TVR is one of my all-time favorite Capitals for a number of reasons, so really good to see him pot one.
With their 5-1 victory over San Jose, the Capitals finish the season with a 12-3-1 record against Pacific Division opponents.
— Capitals PR (@CapitalsPR) March 15, 2025
- The Capitals were near perfect with Martin Fehervary on the ice at five-on-five. During his minutes they out-attempted the Sharks 23-3, outshot them 14-2, outscored them 3-0, and held positive differentials in scoring chances (+7) and high-danger chances (+7). Fehervary also chipped in an assist, three individual shot attempts, two shot blocks, and one hit.
- Logan Thompson didn’t have a ton to do but he was still excellent when called upon. He has been a little shaky of late so this will hopefully be sort of a get-right game for him. Thompson made 19 stops on 20 shots faced and, per MoneyPuck, he saved 0.89 more goals than expected.
- Aliaksei Protas scored his 29th goal of the season. He has six goals in eight games this month. His little brother, Ilya Protas, recorded a natural hat trick for the Windsor Spitfires later in the day to give him 50 goals in his rookie OHL season.
Numbers thanks to Hockey-Reference, NaturalStatTrick, and HockeyStatCards.
