The Washington Capitals went into Pittsburgh to play the flightless birds that have so tormented them throughout history and came away Metropolitan Division winners for the third-straight season. The Caps left PPG Paints Arena with a 3-1 win, but something tells me they might be returning to said arena in the not so distant future.
The Penguins out-shot the Capitals 37 to 34, but were out-attempted at five-on-five 40 to 33.
- First things first, congrats once again to Alex Ovechkin for playing in his 1,000th NHL game on Sunday night. Ovi is only the 54th player in NHL history to play his first 1,000 games with a single franchise. I’m sure we will get to celebrate this achievement even more when the team returns to DC for the final two games of the regular season. O captain, my captain!
- Chop one zero off of 1,000 and you get 100 and that’s how many career NHL games Michal Kempny and Philipp Grubauer now have played. That’s 100 more games than I will ever play, so good on ya boys.
- Dmitry Orlov‘s rush goal was his 10th of the season, the first time Orlov has reached a double digit goal total in his career. On the same play, Evgeny Kuznetsov received an assist which now gives him 78 points this season, a new career high.
- Was Grubi not completely out of his mind or what? The German netminder stopped 36 of the Pens 37 shots and constantly made the ridiculous look almost regular. He is in some kind of groove right now.
- The Caps have now recorded at least 100 points in four-straight seasons for the first time in franchise history.
- It’s hard to just “take away” the long stretches of this game where one of the teams involved was shorthanded, but if you only look at this game from a five-on-five numbers perspective it tells the story of a dominant Caps team. They handily won both the shot attempt (54.8 percent) and scoring chance battle (61.5 percent) and those numbers only look even better when you adjust them for score and venue like the above graph displays.
Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com, Hockeystats.ca, NaturalStatTrick.com, and Corsica.hockey.
Full RMNB Coverage of Caps at Penguins
Headline Photo: Joe Sargent
