Capitals force a Sabres slip-up: numbers for the morning after

The tired Washington Capitals went into Buffalo to take on the red-hot Sabres and eked out a 2-1 win. The win ended Buffalo’s 8-game winning streak and the Capitals’ four-game road losing streak.

It looked like the boys really wanted that one, so good for them.

• The first period, where the Sabres outshot the Capitals 15-3, made it look like this game could go downhill quickly, but the Caps really responded well and turned things around in the final two frames. In the final 40 minutes of regulation, the Capitals held an advantage in shot attempts 39-38, scoring chances 19-15, and high-danger chances 8-6. Really good effort against the hot-as-the-sun Sabres.
• One of the main men behind the win was goaltender Charlie Lindgren, who made 29 stops on 30 shots faced, including a wild sequence of shots from Tage Thompson. According to MoneyPuck, he saved 2.16 more goals than expected. The win was his 67th with the Capitals, tying Pat Riggin for the seventh-most wins in franchise history.
• Ryan Leonard scored in a third straight game and extended his point streak to five games, both career-best runs. The goal was his 14th of the season, and he now has the most goals by a Capitals rookie since Nicklas Backstrom 18 years ago.

• Aliaksei Protas made an absurd pass to set up the eventual game-winning marker, and it was his 100th career assist. Big Pro has been cooking since the end of January, notching 11 points (3g, 8a) in his last 11 games. Now, just wait until his little brother is up with the Capitals, too. Hopefully, we get to see that before the end of this season.
• Jakob Chychrun scored the goal that Protas set up. He is the league leader among all defensemen in both goals (23) and game-winning goals (7) this season. He is just the ninth defenseman in NHL history to score seven game-winning goals in a single season and is one shy of tying the NHL record among defensemen held by Oliver Ekman-Larsson.
• I talk about Hendrix Lapierre‘s ice time when he doesn’t play a lot, so I have to talk about it when he does play a good share. Lapierre was moved to the wing of the team’s second line, which meant he saw 13:17 of ice time in the win, the most he has played in a single game this season since November 5 (14:01). He has only played over 13 minutes in a game three times this year.