The Washington Capitals played a pretty horrible game overall against the Los Angeles Kings on Tuesday night. Unfortunately for the Kings…that didn’t matter as Alex Ovechkin decided to win the entire game in five minutes. His natural hat trick gave the Caps a 4-2 home victory.
The Kings out-shot the Caps 31 to 24 and out-attempted them at five-on-five 52 to 36.
- Look, the Caps were u-g-l-y through about 55 minutes of this game. That’s not a good sign against one of the worst teams in the entire league, but I’ll chalk it up to a letdown energy wise after that thriller against Pittsburgh and knowing their next level of opposition would be much less fierce. The third period was clearly their best and even then at five-on-five they still were matched by the Kings in scoring chances (six) and high danger chances (three).
- Lost in the fray a little bit here is the play of Braden Holtby. Holts got caught leaning on the first Jeff Carter goal, but man was he absolutely fantastic after that. The only reason Ovi had the chance to do what he did is because Holtby completely shut the door on several grade A Kings opportunities. He ended regulation with 29 saves on 31 shots.
- A standout player in a bad way for me was Dmitry Orlov. Every time I looked up it seemed like he was getting roasted and beat by a Kings forward. I counted five separate times where he gave the puck up in bad spots in the Caps own zone. Pick it up, Dima.
- On a slightly more positive note, I liked what I saw from Martin Fehervary overall. His numbers fell victim to the entire team being very bad, but he brought an extra physical snarl to his game that I’m not sure was there before he was sent to Hershey. Add that to his elite skating and how he thinks the game and boy do the Caps have a player here. I personally don’t think assets should be wasted on a depth defensemen at the deadline.
Tonight, Ovechkin scored his 110th career game-winning goal, tied with Brett Hull and Teemu Selanne for the fourth most in NHL history.
— CapitalsPR (@CapitalsPR) February 5, 2020
Ovechkin is the 10th player in NHL history to score 40 goals at the age of 34 or older and the first since Daniel Alfredsson in 2007-08. Only one player has scored 50 goals at the age of 34 or older: Joe Bucyk, 51 goals in 1970-71.
— CapitalsPR (@CapitalsPR) February 5, 2020
This marks the second fewest games Ovechkin has played to reach the 40 goal mark (53 games). His fewest games to reach the 40 goal mark in his career came in the 2007-08 (52 games). Ovechkin was 22 years old at the time.
— CapitalsPR (@CapitalsPR) February 5, 2020
- Now onto the main attraction. Alex Ovechkin grabbed his third hat trick in his last six games. He has 14 goals in his last seven games overall (no other player has more than seven in that same timeframe) and is now only two shy of joining the 700 club. His 27th career hat trick puts him past Maurice Richard for the eighth most in NHL history. His hat trick goal was his 40th goal of the season, giving him 11 career 40 goal seasons, second most in NHL history to only Wayne Gretzky (12). He now has four hat tricks this season, the most he has ever had in one season. He is the first player to reach the 40 goal mark this season, the ninth time in his career he has done that, which is also the NHL record. He scored all three goals for a “natural” hat trick in only 4:24. Whew, okay I think that’s it.
- John Carlson grabbed assists on two of Ovi’s goals and scored his own to get the Caps on the board in the second. His first assist was his 50th of the season in 54 games and he is now one goal away from tying his career high of 15 set in 2017-18 and six assists away from tying his career high of 57 set last year.
- I’m almost glad the Caps only received one power play chance because it was god awful and featured Ovechkin inexplicably on the right side of the ice again. They gave up another two dangerous shorthanded attempts and didn’t get set up once. I’m very tired of talking about this.
Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com and NaturalStatTrick.com.
Full RMNB Coverage of Caps vs Kings
Headline photo: NBC Sports Washington
