The Washington Capitals and Tampa Bay Lightning met for the third and final time this regular season. The Caps 3-1 win cemented a clean series sweep and continues their domination over the Atlantic Division.
The Caps out-shot the Lightning 35 to 27 and out-attempted them at five-on-five 48 to 37.
- Overall, this was yet another great game from the Caps. They went a little into turtle mode in the third and took a couple idiotic penalties, but their five-on-five play as a whole was good. The Lightning only had 13 shots on goal through 40 minutes.
- The Caps are now 5-0-1 in the second half of back-to-backs this season. That sort of ability to win a whole bunch of hockey games in short spans of time feels like something that we should hopefully think fondly about come playoff game every other day time.
- The Lightning’s NHL best power play was held scoreless on seven opportunities in this game, including one 90 second five-on-three. Braden Holtby was fantastic with the Caps down one or two men. The Holtbeast is still absolutely rolling against every team not named the Columbus Blue Jackets.
The Capitals improve to 11-1-0 against Atlantic Division opponents this season.
— CapitalsPR (@CapitalsPR) December 22, 2019
- Congrats to Radko Gudas as he scored his first goal with the Capitals! Radko had a very nice night defensively on the penalty kill and five-on-five as well. The Caps at five-on-five saw 71.4-percent of the shot attempts in their favor with Dadko on the ice.
- First season series sweep of the Lightning since 2015-16.
- Another industrious and impressive night from the Caps bottom six. I love that Nic Dowd was rewarded with the late empty net goal. Carl Hagelin stood out to me as well as someone who worked their butt off in this one.
Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com and NaturalStatTrick.com.
Full RMNB Coverage of Caps vs Lightning
Headline photo: NBC Sports Washington
