It was a wild one in Florida on Thursday night. We got nine total goals, all four goaltenders getting involved, NHL firsts, and NHL legends all over the place.
Things eventually culminated in a 5-4 overtime loss for the Washington Capitals because they are the worst team in the world at three-on-three overtime.
- Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. The Capitals should have won this game in regulation. They’re playing great hockey for long stretches of games right now but are getting a little burned by bad special teams and shoddy goaltending. The second period was almost perfection from a five-on-five process standpoint as they out-attempted Florida 22 to 11, out-scoring chanced them 14 to 3, and out-high danger chanced them 9 to 0. Overall, the Caps took what is probably the league’s best team at five-on-five to the cleaners at their own game. That would be cool and all if that was the only part of hockey that mattered…but it isn’t.
- The power play still sucks. Go read my bullet from the last morning numbers post on it. All of that still applies.
- Alex Ovechkin scored again and had three total points in the game. That alone is enough for me to declare any Capitals game a victory at this point. He has ten goals in ten games which ties his best ever career start. He’s 36-years-old. His great night took back the sole league lead in goals at ten and keeps him solidly in third when it comes to overall scoring (18 points) behind the Edmonton Oilers duo that score about 45 points a game.
- Ovi’s second assist in the game came on Connor McMichael‘s first career NHL goal. McMichael has been pushing hard for that marker since really his first game this season and now that he has it, as someone who watched a ton of him in London, more are coming. Still not happy with him only playing 7 minutes and 58 seconds total in this game though.
Tallying for the @Capitals vs FLA tonight, Alex Ovechkin has his 10th goal of 2021-22 already. The last player to have more in their team's first 9 games of a season? Mario Lemieux (12 in 1992-93). It's also the 2nd fewest team gms he's needed to reach 10 G (Fewest: 8 in 2017-18) pic.twitter.com/bVkOGmpE0k
— StatsCentre (@StatsCentre) November 5, 2021
- I tend to beat up on the fourth line because, in my opinion, they play too much and are Lavi’s obvious pet line. I won’t do that for this game because they were fantastic at controlling the tempo and making the Panthers play in their own end. With that line on the ice at five-on-five, the Capitals got 76.2-percent of the shot attempts and held a plus-five scoring chance differential.
- Two other notable Caps in this game for me were Daniel Sprong and Dmitry Orlov. Both of them felt very active and up for this one. Sprong was sprung on a breakaway and made no mistake with it. Orlov was great in both ends and the Capitals didn’t give up a single high danger chance with him on the ice.
- The Capitals are now 0-4 in three-on-three overtime this season. That is four dropped points and they are now tied with the New York Rangers for second in the Metro almost solely because of how bad they are in overtime. I don’t know the exact solution. I personally would stop playing the slower, more defensive dudes. I’d rather lose because an offensive player blew a coverage or flubbed a pass than watch the other guys just get lapped with the puck like in this one. This is also another way for me to say please play Connor McMichael more.
Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com and NaturalStatTrick.com.
