Ryan Leonard‘s impressive month of March continued on Friday night against the New Jersey Devils.
The 21-year-old scored his fifth goal in his last eight games, giving him 15 total markers this season. Leonard’s tally was the lone goal in the game scored five-on-five, coming 9:36 into the first period.
Leonard plucked a loose puck out of mid-air in the offensive zone, set it down, and snapped a shot over the glove of goaltender Jake Allen.
“Yeah, a great change by Franky set me up out there, and Dewey put a puck in that came to me and just tried to get it off as quick as possible,” Leonard said postgame. “I trusted my shot.”
Leonard finished the game with 14:08 of ice time, three shots on goal on three attempts, two individual scoring chances, one hit, and one shot block.
“I think [Leonard’s shot] is deceptively heavy and hard,” head coach Spencer Carbery said. “He can step into it. We see that every day in practice. Tonight, you saw two situations where he gets time to step in and put everything he’s got into a shot. He can beat anybody in this league, goaltending-wise. That’s his uniqueness: his ability to beat goalies, clear-sighted with his snapshot and wrist shot.
“What he’s developing and working on is that you don’t always get that much time in the National Hockey League, right? Sometimes you’ve got to shoot it through somebody. Sometimes you’ve got to get a rolling puck and rip it. His shot is elite. It’s one of the things that is going to make him a great NHL player.”
With the goal, Leonard became the first Capitals rookie to score 15 times in a season since Alex Ovechkin potted 52 goals during the 2005-06 campaign. He is only the fourth Caps rookie to do so since the 1987-88 season.
Justin Sourdif is just two goals away from being able to claim the same feat.
Some of the names that Leonard has now surpassed in terms of rookie goal-scoring in franchise history include Nicklas Backstrom (14), Dmitri Khristich (13), Marcus Johansson (13), Jakub Vrana (13), Peter Bondra (12), Evgeny Kuznetsov (11), Alexander Semin (10), Andre Burakovsky (9), Connor McMichael (9), Scott Stevens (9), and Kevin Hatcher (9).
Among all NHL rookies this season, Leonard is now tied for sixth in goals with Jimmy Snuggerud and Matthew Wood. His 36 points rank fourth behind only Ivan Demidov (52), Beckett Sennecke (51), Demidov (51), and Matthew Schaefer (50).
