The Washington Capitals finally played a home game after weeks on the road, matching up with the surging Buffalo Sabres at Capital One Arena. That surge was quickly ended by the Caps as they destroyed the Sabres 6-1 in fairly dominant fashion.
The Caps out-shot the Sabres 34 to 30 and out-attempted them at five-on-five 52 to 47.
- The Caps put a nice bow on this one halfway through the first period. Braden Holtby (who was tremendous overall) pushed them through a pretty shaky beginning of the game, but after that the good guys shut the Sabres down entirely and only added to their large lead. In a game in which they had a commanding lead, the Caps still took down the five-on-five shot attempt (16 to 10) and scoring chance (12 to 5) battles in the third period. Best defense is just more offense and not letting your opponent touch the puck for long spells.
- The fourth line came out big style on the score sheet. Travis Boyd tallied two assists, Brendan Leipsic had a goal and an assist, and Chandler Stephenson purposefully shot the puck in the net for his second of the season. This was Leipsic’s first multi point game as a Cap and his goal was his first for the team as well.
- In his 100th career game as a member of the Capitals, Michal Kempny recorded three assists to give him eight points in seven games after returning from injury. Kemper played the entire game on the first pairing with his old bud, the pointless John Carlson.
BTW, the game after this tweet:
Aliaksei Protas: 1 goal, 2 assists (22 points now tied for 2nd in WHL scoring)
Connor McMichael: 3 goals, 3 assists (32 points now tied for 2nd in WHL scoring with FOUR GAMES IN HAND on the leading scorer Kaliyev with 33 points + Byfield) https://t.co/Z5ETg5NAxp
— Chris Cerullo (@CJC_95) November 2, 2019
(McMichael is in the OHL, Chris was tired last night)
- What a game from Jakub Vrana, he scored two which brought his season total to six. V was so, so, so very close to a hat trick on multiple occasions in this one and led all Caps skaters at five-on-five with nine individual shot attempts, six shots on net, and eight individual scoring chances.
- Numerically, the third pairing of Nick Jensen and Jonas Siegenthaler was the best on the night. With Jensen on the ice at five-on-five, the Caps saw 70.6-percent of the shot attempts, a plus-12 scoring chance differential, and a plus-three high danger chance differential.
- Zero mentions of the Nats World Series win. I was in attendance for this one and found that incredibly weird. I guess they’re saving all that hoopla for Sunday night’s game, but it was weird to me that they completely ignored the victory in the first major DC sporting event since the series clincher.
Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com and NaturalStatTrick.com.
Full RMNB Coverage of Caps vs Sabres
Headline photo: NBC Sports Washington
