The Washington Capitals dropped another home-ice matchup with a Central Division team on Tuesday night. After falling into an early hole, the Caps couldn’t complete a comeback over the Dallas Stars, falling 6-5 in regulation.
Maybe they should have worn their blue Hometown Remix sweaters a game earlier instead of their normal red jerseys.
- The Capitals were again fine at five-on-five against one of the Western Conference’s top teams, but had a different issue in this loss than their one against the Minnesota Wild. Instead of struggling to score, their goaltender couldn’t stop a puck for the first half of the contest. Dallas outscored Washington 5-2 at five-on-five, but the Capitals recorded more shot attempts (47-39), more scoring chances (27-20), and just two fewer high-danger chances (7-9).
- The Capitals lost by one goal, and that difference came down to the play of the three goalies. According to MoneyPuck, Jake Oettinger allowed 2.09 more goals than expected while Logan Thompson (2.68) and Charlie Lindgren (0.17) combined to allow 2.85 more goals than expected.
- Jordan Kyrou recorded three points (1g, 2a) in the loss, giving him his fourth multi-point game of the season, which ranks tied for first on the team with Dylan Strome and Alex Tuch. Kyrou has 12 points (4g, 8a) in his last eight games and is now tied with Strome for the team’s scoring lead at 14 points.
- The Stars have now won nine of their last 10 games against the Capitals, outscoring them 32-21 during that span. Dallas has also won seven of their last eight games played at Capital One Arena. Weirdly specific domination from a team that Washington doesn’t see much.
- If you want another good summary of this game, the Capitals, at five-on-five with Tom Wilson on the ice, owned 17 of the 22 shot attempts, all 11 scoring chances, and all four high-danger chances. They were outscored 1-0 in those minutes. Rough puck luck and untimely poor goaltending.
- Ryan Leonard scored his fifth goal of the season, putting him on pace to score 30 this year. I honestly think he should be pacing even better than that, but his role has been very weird to start the year. He played the second-fewest five-on-five minutes on the team in this game (10:19), one of just two players (Ilya Protas, 9:58) not to hit the 11-minute mark.
Numbers thanks to Hockey-Reference, NaturalStatTrick, and HockeyStatCards.
