The Washington Capitals have wrapped up their long road trip with a 4-0-1 record, adding that fourth win in the last game against the Toronto Maple Leafs. It took overtime yet again, but the Caps pulled out a 4-3 win featuring two goals from both Alex Ovechkin and John Carlson.
The Caps out-shot the Leafs 34 to 27 and out-attempted them at five-on-five 34 to 32.
- Pretty fantastic road game from the Caps overall. Really stymied the Leafs big guns offensively at even strength and even took it to them at some points which we’ll look at later in this post. The boys won the five-on-five scoring chance battle, particularly with a big third period where they out-chanced the Leafs 10 to 6.
- Alex Ovechkin now holds sole possession of 12th all time in NHL goal scoring, passing Luc Robitaille with his 669th career goal. Ovi also ranks first in NHL history in overtime goals and is seventh in game winning goals. He had ten shots on net in the game, the 49th time in his career that he has done so.
- John Carlson just keeps scoring. With his first goal on the night and 22nd point of the season, he passed Brian Leetch and Paul Coffey for the second most points by a defenseman in the month of October. With his second goal on the night and 23rd point of the season, he passed Sergei Gonchar (January, 2000) for the Caps franchise record for most points by a defenseman in a single month. Oh yeah, and he also tied Kevin Hatcher at 426 points which is the third most points in franchise history by a defenseman.
With a win tonight, the Capitals improve to 9-2-3 and have won nine games in October, tying a franchise record set in 1991-92 and set a new franchise high with 21 points in a single October (previous record: 19 points, 2009-10).
— CapitalsPR (@CapitalsPR) October 30, 2019
- Braden Holtby is now 4-0-1 in his last five games. There is some walking back that needs to be done by some Caps fans.
- Nicklas Backstrom quietly posted a three assist game. That is his 43rd career three assist game and he tied Peter Forsberg at 885 points for the seventh most all time by a Swede.
- The Caps best line on the night numbers line was their second line consisting of Evgeny Kuznetsov, Tom Wilson, and Jakub Vrana. The majority of their even strength ice time came against the Auston Matthews line and with those three on the ice at five-on-five the Caps created five scoring chances to the Leafs two.
Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com and NaturalStatTrick.com.
Full RMNB Coverage of Caps at Maple Leafs
Headline photo: NBC Sports Washington
