figures for the next day

The Washington Capitals came into action on Saturday night with about fourteen thousand players missing, beat the Philadelphia Flyers 2-1 in overtime and will walk away with a few thousand more injuries.

The Caps dominated the Flyers 40-29 but were beaten five to five 45-43.

• As you can see in the intro of this article, the Caps were missing a lot of guys for this game. This means that I don’t really take the process of this game too seriously even though I thought they had done this one really well. They fired 40 shots into the Philly net and ended up edging the Flyers five-on-five in the two “luck” categories we like to look at (scoring chances and high danger chances). You would love a regulation win to stay in contention for the division title, but they were basically playing with both hands tied behind their backs and won anyway.
• So let’s name all the guys that will likely be on the playoff list that are either going on or playing some kind of disease. Alex Ovechkin, Nicklas Backstrom, Evgeny Kuznetsov, TJ Oshie, Tom wilson, Conor Sheary, John carlson, Justin schultz, Ilya Samsonov, and Michal kempny.
• Lars Eller was your hero in the third period and the birthday boy was not only awarded the late tying goal, but he also played the most minutes in a game he has ever played in the NHL at 27:06, eclipsing his previous record of 22:25 from 2018. Lars has stepped up whenever the Caps need him while he’s in Washington. One of the most underrated players in the entire league and one of my favorite Capitals of all time. Besides his goal, he shot eight individual shot attempts towards the cage, recorded five individual scoring chances, four high danger individual chances, blocked a shot and took a penalty.

Conor Sheary wins it for the Capitals in overtime, his fourth career game-winning goal in overtime and his first as a Capital.

– CapitalsPR (@CapitalsPR) May 9, 2021

• The Caps sent seven different line combos in this game. Only one played more than six minutes together five-on-five, which was the staunch fourth row.
• Glue the taps to Craig anderson who hasn’t played for what seems like ages and only allowed one goal against. He stopped 28 shots in total and a few of those late game saves were huge.
• Finally, let’s congratulate a little Garrett pilon for making his NHL debut. He only played 10:43 in a game where the Caps were missing about half of DC’s population, but he wasn’t “bad” and that’s about what you’d expect from a newbie.

Figures thanks to Hockey-reference.com and NaturalStatTrick.com.

Caps vs Flyers RMNB Coverage

Photo title: KP8 Design