The Washington Capitals took game one of their three-game, regular season, mini-series with the New York Islanders by a score of 1-0 in a shootout.
The Caps outshot the Isles 28 to 26 and out-attempted them at five-on-five 47 to 34.
- The Caps had a long break in between games and it showed in the first period of this one. The Isles blitzed them with 13 five-on-five scoring chances but the good guys were able to survive and respond quite well. That response included 13 five-on-five scoring chances of their own in the second period and really from the drop of the puck to start the second frame the Caps utterly dominated this hockey game. Dominating the Isles can still mean you don’t score any goals though as we saw here. That’s kinda how Barry Trotz has them designed to play which obviously wins a lot of hockey games but good lord is it an absolute slog to watch.
- Ilya Samsonov was the main factor that kept the Caps afloat in the first twenty minutes and he picked up the third shutout of his career. I very much hope the Caps ride Sammy for the overwhelming majority of games remaining.
- Michael Raffl made his debut on the Caps third line and against a team like the Isles, I do think he fits on that line better than Daniel Sprong. However, I think Sprong should get that spot back against basically every other NHL team. Garnet Hathaway should be the one sitting for Raffl otherwise. The third line was very good overall as with them on the ice at five-on-five the Caps controlled 61.9-percent of the shot attempts, had a plus-four scoring chance differential, and didn’t give up any high danger chances against.
The Capitals improve to 16-7-2 on the road, which is tied for the most road wins in the NHL (Winnipeg: 16) and their .680 road point percentage is the fourth highest in the NHL.
— CapitalsPR (@CapitalsPR) April 23, 2021
- Alex Ovechkin didn’t take a single shift in overtime as he was apparently unavailable according to Peter Laviolette. I know Ovi is chasing a whole bunch of records, but some rest down the stretch before the big show would not be a bad idea. So…win all of these games against the Isles and that probably can maybe happen, please?
- The Caps grabbed sole possession of first place in the East from the Pens with these two points. This is gonna be quite an insane final few weeks.
- Jakub Vrana scored four times for the Red Wings last night. Four times. That’s four times. Richard Panik also had a goal in the Wings 7-3 win over the Stars. I still really like Anthony Mantha.
Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com and NaturalStatTrick.com.
RMNB Coverage of Caps at Bruins
Headline photo: KP8 Design
