On Saturday night the Washington Capitals just straight-up got boomed by the Philadelphia Flyers.
It started innocently enough. Sean Couturier got a power-play goal off a nifty low-to-high pass, but TJ Oshie answered with a PPG of his own. But then in the blink of an eye the lead was 3-1 Flyers as Raffl and Couturier got two goals on back-to-back shots. JVR got another 90 seconds later, and that was pretty much it. I’m told that Nicolas Aube-Kubel, Travis Konecny, and Claude Giroux added more goals in the third period; I think I may have blacked out. Oh, and Kuznetsov got a stat-padder in the final eight minutes.
Caps lose.
- I don’t think this is the story of the game, but it’s worth nothing: the Flyers just destroyed the Caps on the face-off dot. It was like 46-17.
- There was a moment early in the game when Braden Holtby made a couple big kick saves on Kevin Hayes. I was thinking then, “hey, if the defense can just stabilize, this could be a good game.”
❌❌❌ pic.twitter.com/KekStbbhys
— Washington Capitals (@Capitals) February 9, 2020
- The defense did not stabilize, and it was not a good game. It was a very bad game. Here’s a heatmap from Natural Stat Trick for where the Flyers’ shots came from against Braden.
- Um, what else, let’s see.
- Oh! Matt Niskanen. He used to play here. Great guy. Won a Cup. He came back, it was a nice little moment. Before everything went to hell.
- Richard Panik almost did a good thing. Then he successfully did two bad things (two hooking penalties).
- Martin Fehervary got his first NHL point on the meaningless Kuzy goal.
- No Caps player was good in this one. TJ Oshie got a goal, but his top line got thrashed 2:1 in shot attempts. Evgeny Kuznetsov’s almost made me forget about the three Flyers goals he was on-ice for. Lars Eller‘s line controlled the puck, but they got outscored 2-0. Even the usually lovely fourth line got stomped. And Holtby had a .720 save percentage before he was given a merciful hook.
- Let’s see. What else. What else. Nope, nothing. This sucked. Chris was supposed to do this recap. He freaking owes me. And I was gonna trade him my Kangaskhan. As if.
Getting fancy with brown checkers #JoeBSuitOfTheNight #CapsFlyers pic.twitter.com/KFNOsBnzQT
— Ian Oland (@ianoland) February 9, 2020
Thinking back on it, the Caps really didn’t play well against the LA Kings earlier this week. They were kinda trash for 55 minutes, and then Alex Ovechkin just happened to flip on anime mode and win the thing singlehandedly. That could work if it’s just a goal or two — not a freaking touchdown.
So despite a lot of rest, the Caps got humiliated in their own house by a division rival. They’ve not played a respectable game of hockey in more than a week. They’re playing their old coach next. If that game looks anything like this one, they oughta wear paper bags over their helmets.
