The Washington Capitals have lost three games in a row by a combined 11-2 score. The team’s latest loss, a 3-1 defeat on Friday night, came against a tired New York Islanders team that had lost three games in a row on their four-game road trip.
Another injury to a key player as well. The boys need to rally for a big win later tonight.
- The overall five-on-five stats flatter the Capitals because of their absurdly dominant first period. Within the first 20 minutes, they collected 25 shot attempts, 19 scoring chances, nine high-danger chances, and 2.11 expected goals. Unfortunately, Pierre-Luc Dubois’ injury disrupted their lineup, and that level did not remain for the remaining 40 minutes. In the final two periods combined, the Capitals managed just 27 shot attempts, 12 scoring chances, five high-danger chances, and 1.24 expected goals.
- Tom Wilson scored the lone goal in the loss, his team-leading sixth of the season. He also leads the Capitals in overall scoring with 12 points (6g, 6a) in 11 games, joining Dylan Strome (10 points in 9 games) as the lone two players on the club scoring at above a point-per-game rate.
- Per MoneyPuck, Ilya Sorokin was tremendous in net for the Islanders, saving 2.43 goals above expected. Logan Thompson also had a good night, stopping 0.05 more than expected. Sorokin definitely stole the game by keeping New York in the game during the first period.
- The power play went 0-for-4 and is now 0-for-9 in the last three games. They managed just three total shots against the Islanders and gave up a controversial shorthanded goal to JG Pageau.
- Dylan Strome’s return is much needed because the current top trio of Alex Ovechkin, Connor McMichael, and Ryan Leonard is really not working. In their five-on-five minutes together, the Capitals have seen just 23.8 percent of shot attempts, 29.7 percent of expected goals, 41.3 percent of scoring chances, and 37.4 percent of high-danger chances. They’ve also done so without seeing any defensive-zone assignments. Leonard, in particular, looked abnormally off and a little slow to me against the Islanders.
- John Carlson played a team-high 25:07 of ice time in the loss. I’d look for a heavy, heavy workload for Jakob Chychrun in Buffalo.
Numbers thanks to Hockey-Reference, NaturalStatTrick, and HockeyStatCards.
