The Caps were in dire need of a solid, convincing victory after failing to do so for over a week. They got just that against the Minnesota Wild in a 3-1 win at Capital One Arena.
The Capitals out-shot the Wild 43 to 31 and out-attempted them five-on-five 47 to 37.
- Bruce Boudreau and the Wild have somewhat solved shot quality. Peter has said this before about the Wild, however I don’t think either of us are exactly sure how or what in their system encourages this, but it’s been present since Bruce took over in Minnesota. They can get heavily out-attempted by an opponent, but still find a way to come out even or sometimes ahead when it comes to generating scoring chances and especially high danger chances. In this game at five-on-five the Capitals out-attempted the Wild 47 to 37, but only out-scoring chanced them 20-19 and actually lost the battle for high danger chances 10 to 9. The Wild are a very hard team to get a read on and a dangerous team to get complacent with. The Caps kept their foot on the pedal late in the game and it paid off.
- Alex Stalock and Braden Holtby went head to head for most of this game in a goalie duel of sorts. Holtby ended up with 30 saves on 31 shots and Stalock ended up with 40 saves on 43 shots. Both netminders let nothing past them in the second period and the Wild were only able to stay close in the third due to Stalock’s fabulous rebound control and ten bell efforts on almost sure goals off of Capitals sticks.
- Deja vu alert. The line of Nicklas Backstrom, TJ Oshie, and Chandler Stephenson was phenomenal. Name a stat category and they probably dominated it for the Caps. Five-on-five shot attempt percentages, scoring chances for percentages, high danger chances for percentages, etc. etc. We’ve seen a trend of this line playing well, but getting no tangible offensive production, but they were on the ice for Dmitry Orlov‘s first period goal in this game. I think and hope the points should come in bunches soon.
- That same line played most of its minutes five-on-five with the pairing of Orlov and Matt Niskanen. That group of five is currently the Caps best possible five that they can send out during really any game scenario. It’s like how the old NHL games used to give you an option late in periods to use a “hero line” composed of your best players, but at the expense of your roster depth.
- Jakub Vrana has become a little bit of a polarizing figure on the Caps roster over the past week. He was scratched for being in “participation mode”, but immediately brought back into the lineup the next game. Vrana and the rest of the third line were great when it comes to all of their underlying statistics, something that they’ve been doing the entire season. Someone should let Barry know that. Vrana himself was responsible for three shots and creating two high danger chances. The latter was most on the team tied with Brett Connolly and Backstrom.
- The Alex Ovechkin line finally got away from Brooks Orpik a little bit. The line saw their even strength ice time basically split even with four different defensemen each getting over four minutes of ice with the line. Staggering the defensive pairs minutes with different lines is something the Caps need to keep doing.
- Orpik played the least minutes five-on-five of any defenseman on the team. The team saw markedly better possession numbers all across the board. Will we get more limiting of his minutes? Was this just a one off coincidence? Lets hope the answer to that last question is no.
Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com, Hockeystats.ca, NaturalStatTrick.com, and Corsica.hockey.
Full RMNB Coverage of Caps vs Wild
Headline photo: Patrick McDermott
