The Washington Capitals have won four games in a row and have points in ten straight games after their 4-1 win over the Pittsburgh Penguins on Saturday night. Washington was powered to their win by a few of the usual high-scoring suspects on the club’s roster this season.
The five-on-five stats don’t flatter the Capitals but I really liked this game from an eye-test standpoint. Good stuff.
- Like I said, the five-on-five stats in this game actually favored the Penguins. I don’t really buy those numbers, so I’m not going to go into them too much from an overall team perspective. The Capitals did a lot of their best work on their third-period power plays. They put up 14 shot attempts, nine shots on goal, eight scoring chances, and six high-danger chances on their 5:37 of man advantage time in the final frame. They should have had multiple power-play goals if John Carlson had any luck this season.
- Logan Thompson saw his shutout streak end after going 198:22 without allowing a goal, the third-longest shutout streak in Capitals franchise history. Per MoneyPuck, he stopped another 0.5 more goals than expected. He deserves legitimate Vezina consideration, and the Capitals need to extend him.
- Pierre-Luc Dubois (1g, 1a), Aliaksei Protas (1g, 1a), and Connor McMichael (2a) combined for six points (2g, 4a) in the win. The three are the Capitals’ second, third, and fourth-highest point scorers this season. Dubois and Protas have been consistently good as of late, but it was especially good to see McMichael get back on the scoresheet after a bit of a slump this month.
- Tom Wilson played in his 800th career NHL game and had plenty of chances to score his 20th goal of the season but just couldn’t beat Joel Blomqvist. He did pick up an assist consolation prize on Brandon Duhaime’s empty-netter. Big congrats to Tom. What a player.
- With the win, the Capitals (67 points) extended their Metropolitan Division lead to nine points over the New Jersey Devils (58 points). The Devils have been sputtering lately, winning just two of their last 10 games. The Carolina Hurricanes (57 points) have just one fewer point than the Devils and, like the Capitals, two games in hand.
- I’m a big believer that a rising tide lifts all boats, so it was awesome to see the Washington Commanders send the Detroit Lions packing after the Capitals won. The Commanders are headed to the NFC Championship game for the first time in 33 years. Let’s hope we’re about to enter an era of DC sports dominance. But, maybe just wait to let the Wizards know that “we’re back up” once they’ve fully secured a top pick in the 2025 NBA Draft.
