The Washington Capitals had a feel-good factor around them after Monday’s exciting victory over the Edmonton Oilers. That wouldn’t last long as they dropped their next one on home ice 4-1 against a Pittsburgh Penguins team that had lost their previous seven games.
And we had to listen to that annoying national TV broadcast. Yuck.
- I feel like I have 56 mental photocopies of this exact same Caps-Pens game in my brain. You’d very likely need to ask “which exact date” when shown the numbers from it because this is just typically how these games have gone between these two teams since like 2015. The Caps held five-on-five advantages in shot attempts (50 to 44), scoring chances (29 to 23), and high-danger chances (10 to 9) but they lost the game 4-1. The Pens capitalized on some leaky goaltending and got a ton of puck luck. Same old, same old.
- Darcy Kuemper was that leaky perpetrator in net for the Caps. I personally don’t think a whole lot of this game is directly on him and it was more awful luck than poor play from his standpoint. He was personally very down on himself postgame and I think that’s where the discussion about him should really end. He’s been excellent this season. One half a goal more than expected let by from him in this game isn’t the end of the world. He’s still a top-ten starter in the league in that regard via MoneyPuck’s goals saved above expected (~4.9).
- Sonny Milano, playing in his 200th career NHL game, grabbed his first point as a member of the Capitals on Marcus Johansson’s goal. Milano in general has brought a refreshing influx of skill and creativity to a team that has a lot of the time lacked those two things, not played those two things, or just decided to get rid of those two things altogether in recent years. Yes, that was shade.
MARTY PARTY 💯#ALLCAPS | @LeidosInc pic.twitter.com/6lhUJgoB6h
— Washington Capitals (@Capitals) November 10, 2022
- Alex Alexeyev made his season debut and didn’t exactly have the greatest night statistically. With him on the ice at five-on-five, the Caps saw negative differentials in shot attempts (-9), scoring chances (-6), and high-danger chances (-1). I’m still a big fan of AA and hope he gets more looks this season. He’s one of those players that has grown as much as he’s going to at the AHL level so it won’t hurt him to stick around all season even if he’s the seventh or eighth guy on the NHL blueline.
- I think we could be hitting a bit of a purple patch for Evgeny Kuznetsov. He had another big game after tallying four points against Edmonton. It didn’t show up on the scoreboard this time but he led the Caps in shots on goal (5), individual scoring chances (5), and individual high-danger chances (2).
- With one assist in the game, Sidney Crosby moved ahead of Alex Ovechkin again on the all-time points list into sole possession of 18th. The two superstars came into the game deadlocked at 1,423 career points.
Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com and NaturalStatTrick.com.
