The Washington Capitals dropped their second game on this three-game Western Conference road trip. The Caps will come home with just two points from a shutout victory against the Arizona Coyotes after falling 3-2 to the Colorado Avalanche on Tuesday.
And, Tom Wilson got hurt again. Great.
- I really felt like the Capitals were going to find a way to win that one. Nothing seems to be going right now for the boys though. They either outplay their opposition and lose a tight one or throw up a stinker and lose that way too. At some point, the bounces will come back around if they keep playing as they did in this game. They outshot a very good Avs team on the road 38 to 26 and held a plus-8 high-danger chance differential.
- Darcy Kuemper made 23 stops on 26 shots in his return to Denver for the first time post-Cup celebrations. MoneyPuck says he should have saved a full goal more than he did (.99) and that was the difference in this game. Alexandar Georgiev at the other end had a fantastic 36-save performance and at the least saved the Avs from having to see overtime.
- Alex Ovechkin got on the board with his 31st goal of the season. Ovi absolutely kills Georgiev since the Bulgarian-born netminder broke into the league. He has nine goals in eight career games against him.
Dylan Strome recorded the primary assist on Ovechkin's goal, his 25th assist of the season. Strome extends his point streak to four games (3g, 2a).
— CapitalsPR (@CapitalsPR) January 25, 2023
- The Caps were absolutely dominant with Aliaksei Protas on the ice at five-on-five which has been the case this season no matter who he plays with. With him on the ice in that 12:19 of five-on-five ice time, the Caps saw positive differentials in shot attempts (+14), scoring chances (+4), and high-danger chances (+5). I said on our Discord that I think Protas has been visually better than every single “old” on the team not named Alex Ovechkin this season. I’ll let you determine who the olds are that I speak of on your own.
- As I mentioned briefly in the intro, Tom Wilson played just 9:04 of ice time before blocking a shot and leaving the game with a lower-body injury. Wilson has three points (2g, 1a) in eight games since returning from offseason knee surgery. Let’s hope this one is a very quick one compared to what he dealt with the past six or so months.
- The Caps are now 4-6-1 in the month of January after a very hot 11-2-2 December. They need to find their way back to some of that holiday season magic.
Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com and NaturalStatTrick.com.
