The Washington Capitals stuck around in New York on their Caps dad’s/mentor’s trip and beat another Empire State team in the New York Islanders. They downed their old bench boss’ squad 4-1, extending their win streak to six games and keeping their lead over the NHL’s Metropolitan Divsion.
The Isles out-shot the Caps 33 to 24 and out-attempted them at five-on-five 46 to 35.
- The Caps had a fantastic opening period if you just ignore the whole first thirty seconds or so. Outside of that Valtteri Filppula goal, Natural Stat Trick has the Isles recording four other high danger chances in the period. I didn’t see that. No other Isles chance in the first twenty minutes was at all “scary” to me, they were incredibly pedestrian. Similar story in the second with the numbers not matching my eye test. Cal Clutterbuck had a deflection try that got behind Holtby and Adam Pelech sent an odd man rush chance wide, but other than that the Caps were incredibly stingy defensively and their man-to-man coverage was like prime Darrelle Revis. The Caps definitely were the slower of the two squads in the third five-on-five, but their lethal man advantage made that a moot point. To summarize, I don’t think the numbers from this game match the true effort of the Caps as I was incredibly happy with this performance which is becoming a trend.
- Tom Wilson is a man possessed right now. Willy racked up his fourth career three point game with two goals and an assist on Ovechkin’s empty netter. He now has six goals and twelve points in just eight games since returning from suspension. Hot, hot, hot. Side note, the interference penalty call on him in the third period was putrid, reputation, garbage.
- As I said prior, Alex Ovechkin got on the board with his 18th goal in 24 games this season. Ovi is currently tied with Jeff Skinner at 18 goals apiece and the two of them are behind David Pastrnak and man child, Patrik Laine who both have 19 goals to lead the league.
- Braden Holtby was really, really good on the Capitals penalty kill, where I believe the only true real dangerous Islander spells came from. Holts is in a major groove right now as he recorded a 32-save victory, giving him a 2.33 goals against average and and a .934 save percentage in the month of November.
With an assist on Tom Wilson’s goal, Nicklas Backstrom has recorded his 826th point as a Capital, passing Peter Bondra for the second most points in franchise history.
— CapitalsPR (@CapitalsPR) November 27, 2018
- The fourth line was particularly stellar Tuesday night. Nic Dowd was a definite standout for me. Dowd was flying, scored a goal after a nifty assist from Dmitrij Jaskin, and is now riding a three-game point streak.
- Another shoutout for Michal Kempny who I think has easily been the Caps best pure defensive player while also adding some clutch offense over this six-game winning streak. Michal seems to be fully back in the flow of things after his early season concussion. Man, what a steal this guy continues to be.
Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com, NaturalStatTrick.com, and Corsica.hockey.
Full RMNB Coverage of Caps at Islanders
Headline photo: Mike Stobe
