The Washington Capitals kind of stunk up the joint in their last game of 2018, but who really cares because they won the Stanley Cup in June. The 6-3 defeat to the Nashville Predators could happen for the rest of the season and I’m pretty sure that Cup win would still be holding me over just fine.
The Preds out-shot the Caps 34 to 25, but the Caps edged them out in five-on-five shot attempts 64 to 53.
- First things first, I feel like I may need to clear something up about these posts. In the intro I sometimes say, “but the Caps out-attempted [insert team here] at five-on-five number to number”. That “but” really isn’t meant to be totally positive. What I mean by that, is that score effects in the NHL are real and that a team that out attempts another team can very well have been not very good in the game. For example, the Caps were not very good against the Predators, just take a look at the heat map. I’m considering just doing away with that line overall in these posts because I don’t want it to seem like shot attempts alone are this prevailing, godly statistic. I hope this bullet doesn’t just muddy the waters even further, I’d love some of y’alls feedback on this..
- Nicklas Backstrom‘s 624th career assist put him past Henrik Zetterberg for eighth most assists all time by a Swedish born player. There is no doubt he will be climbing those rankings even further.
- The Caps top six has been stale and very “meh” for about five games now. There’s really no number to this observation, it’s just fairly obvious from the eye test alone. Todd Reirden seemed to notice this as well during this game and we should hopefully see some sort of mix up in the coming games.
- Everyone go rewatch Nashville’s first goal and tell me why Madison Bowey is overcommitting to the corner and what the hell is Brooks Orpik doing?
- Alex Ovechkin hasn’t scored in exactly one eternity.
- Sorry for the slim pickings in this post, but it is a holiday after all. Happy New Year! 2018 was a great year for these posts and I hope 2019 is even better. Thanks for reading!
Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com, NaturalStatTrick.com, and Corsica.hockey.
Full RMNB Coverage of Caps vs Predators
Headline photo: Geoff Burke
