Capitals batten down the hatches enough to stave off Oilers in high-scoring thriller: numbers for the morning after

The Washington Capitals are finally on a winning streak after not being able to string together two wins for over three weeks. The team’s second win in a row came in high-scoring style, a 7-4 slaying of the Edmonton Oilers.

One of the worst games, if not the worst, they’ve played analytically all season, and they scored seven goals. That’s hockey, baby.

• The Capitals ceded way too much ice to the Oilers at five-on-five, especially in the third period, as Edmonton poured it on with their comeback attempt. In the third alone, the Oilers were up 33-10 in shot attempts, 18-5 in scoring chances, and 9-2 in high-danger chances. That’s the Capitals under siege and, to their credit, they handled it about as well as they could have. Remember, this was a Caps team playing Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl without Pierre-Luc Dubois and Nic Dowd to match up with them. Somewhat terrifying to think about. Two points are two points.
• Hello, Ryan Leonard, could we have some more of that? Two goals from Leonard for his first multi-goal and multi-point game of his short NHL career. The 20-year-old winger scored the two goals on his two shots in the game and played 12:12 of total ice time. I imagine he plays much more than that if Dowd is in the lineup and if the game isn’t close for much of the third.
• Three assists from Connor McMichael as well, as he now has six points (1g, 5a) in his last three games. He did really well in his direct matchup with Draisaitl, coming away from the game at five-on-five, up 2-1 in goals and dead even 4-4 in high-danger chances. You’ll take that every time.

• Alex Ovechkin scored his 904th career goal to give him goals in three straight games. He is the first player age 40 or older to extend their goal-scoring streak to three games, since Matt Cullen did so with the Pittsburgh Penguins during the 2016-17 campaign.
• Ovechkin’s line got positively shelled at five-on-five again, though, despite their sheltered zone starts. With Ovechkin on the ice, the Oilers saw a heavy advantage in shot attempts (21-6), scoring chances (13-3), and high-danger chances (9-2). In most games, the Capitals cannot afford to be losing those minutes at all, let alone that badly.
• Tom Wilson potted two empty-net goals to give him 11 in 20 games this season, which puts him on pace to score 45 over a full 82-game slate. The two goals also saw him leap over Bobby Carpenter (188) for 10th all-time on the Capitals’ goal-scoring list with 190 career goals. If he keeps his current pace up, he’ll easily surpass TJ Oshie (192), Dave Christian (193), Bengt-Ake Gustafsson (195), and Alexander Semin (197) for sixth on the all-time list.