The Capitals officially opened up Capital One Arena for the new season, dispatching the Montreal Canadiens 6-1. Déjà vu time. Alex Ovechkin earned himself another hat trick, but this time plus one more goal.
This game was won handily, no doubt about that. It only takes one glance at the box score to figure that out. However, the Caps were heavily out attempted and out shot by the Habs especially in the second and third periods. You can surely blame some of that on score effects, but I’d say blame more of it on pure sloppy play getting bailed out by a Vezina winning goaltender.
Woof, that’s not a good looking chart. Braden Holtby was under siege for large parts of the second and third periods and came up large to keep the blowout intact. The Caps netminder ended the night with 38 saves and has seemingly found his groove after a shaky first period in Ottawa. I didn’t even specifically mention his effort in the recap. That should probably be an arrest-able offense.
- Ovechkin’s four goals, Evgeny Kuznetsov‘s four assists and Jakub Vrana‘s assist means the first line trio has now combined for 17 points over the first two games. Production like this is obviously unsustainable, but lets enjoy this kind of scoring from some of our favorites while it lasts.
- On the flip side that first line, like the majority of the team, was susceptible to defensive lapses at even strength. The three just turned out to be the worst of the bunch when it comes to forwards conceding shot attempts. Looking at all three collectively, only Ovechkin was able to stay above a shot attempt percentage of 30%. That’s not great and if they weren’t putting up points like mad men, we’d probably have some early hot takes to discuss.
- I talked a lot about defensive minute distribution in the last morning after numbers post and it’s that time again. Barry Trotz was much more willing to give Taylor Chorney and Aaron Ness more ice time in a blowout game like this one. Both defenders saw their total minutes rise, Chorney getting 17:39 and Ness getting 14:22. Only John Carlson due to his special teams duties played what I would consider a larger amount of minutes at 23:08.
- In a game full of possession black eyes, Alex Chiasson was actually able to stay exactly even (50%) in terms of 5v5 shot attempt percentage. He was the only Caps player to do so. I may be in the minority but I think the big rig and his 11 even strength goals last season will be a nice piece in DC this year.
- One. That’s the number of goals scored in the National Hockey League by an Australian. Good going Nathan Walker, may there be plenty more red lights in your future.
- Fun fact: Alex Ovechkin didn’t win one face-off in his last two seasons and he also only took one. In the ever more scrutinized face-off dot this season, he will probably get more chances than ever to increase his career 35.7%. He went 1-0 Saturday night.
Numbers thanks to Hockeystats.ca and Photo: Patrick McDermott
