Thursday night, the Washington Capitals continued their absolute, utter domination of the Boston Bruins over the last five years. The 4-2 victory was the team’s fourteenth in a row against the Bruins. The kids call that “free rent”.
The Bruins out-shot the Caps 41 to 22 and out-attempted them at five-on-five 55 to 30.
- Okay, lets get this idiocy out of the way first. No, you sniveling, punk loser, Lars Eller actually plays 17 minutes a night and that’s impressive considering the two centers he sits behind on the depth chart. For someone who was seemingly so devoted to “hockey code” in the Caps 7-0 destruction of the Bruins, Brad Marchand sure found a way to dodge the scheduled retribution for his sucker punch fight. Hypocritical milksop.
- The shot and shot attempt battle sure looks lopsided and that’s because the Bruins seemingly are fine with firing harmless point drives with zero traffic at goaltenders every time they enter the offensive zone. I thought the Caps did a fantastic job of boxing out at even strength. Braden Holtby had probably one of the easier ~ 40 save nights of his career, at least at five-on-five. Holts really shined for me on the penalty kill where I thought the Bruins could have scored three or four times if not for some Holtbeast magic. The Caps took the high danger chance battle at five-on-five even though they attempted to fire 25 less pucks than the Bruins on the night and the numbers go further into the away team’s favor as you adjust for score and venue. Not a perfect effort, but still a good one with potentially misleading numbers.
- Alex Ovechkin‘s two points on the night put him past Bobby Hull (blech) for 50th all time in point scoring at 1,171. His 128th career multi-goal game moved him past Mike Bossy and Jaromir Jagr for ninth all time in the NHL in that category.
- Jakub Vrana now has three goals and four points in his last two games after his breakaway tally opened the evening’s scoring. Now, time for Peter’s favorite thing ever. Vrana is now on pace for 28 goals this season and 47 points.
- As I said previously, this was the Caps fourteenth victory in a row against the Bruins. The last B’s victory against the Caps came on March 29, 2014. Jarome Iginla had two goals for the Bruins in a 4-2 win that also included Evgeny Kuznetsov‘s second career NHL goal. In Braden Holtby’s career he is now 16-2 against the Bruins with a 1.78 goals against average and a .944 save percentage.
- The Caps are now 16-1 in their last 17 against Eastern Conference opponents. The only team with a comparable streak to that this season is the Tampa Bay Lightning, who they have yet to play.
Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com, NaturalStatTrick.com, and Corsica.hockey.
Full RMNB Coverage of Caps at Bruins
Headline photo: Steve Babineau
