Lars Eller got things going for the Caps in the game’s
fourth minute. Andre Burakovsky rushed
the puck up the right side to the Los Angeles line where the puck slid off his
stick and down into the corner to the left of goalie Peter Budaj. Burakovsky pursued it into the corner,
pressuring Alec Martinez enough to give it up to Brent Connolly, who managed to
slide it to the middle to the waiting Eller.
From the low slot, Eller had time to pull the puck to his forehand and
snap it past Budaj’s right pad to make it 1-0 just 3:16 into the game.
Washington doubled their lead late in the period when Evgeny
Kuznetsov hustled down the left side with the puck, stopped just inside the
Kings’ blue line and fed Marcus Johansson in the middle for a shot that beat
Budaj on the blocker side as the goalie was peeking out the other side of a
screen his own teammate – Jake Muzzin – set in front of him. The goal at 18:12 of the period gave the Caps
a 2-0 lead going into the first intermission.
The Caps piled it on in the second period with a pair of
goals, the first coming early on Brett Connolly’s tenth of the season. The play started with Karl Alzner poking a
loose puck in the neutral zone away from the stick of Brayden McNabb. It made its way to Tom Wilson, who carried it
down the right wing into the Los Angeles zone on a 2-on-1 break. Wilson feathered the puck into open space for
Connolly, who took it in stride, made one move of Budaj to fake him to the ice,
and wrapped it around his left pad to make it 3-0 at the 3:43 mark.
Late in the second period, T.J. Oshie made it 4-0. From the defensive zone, Dmitry Orlov fed the
puck up to Alex Ovechkin standing in front of the players’ bench. Ovechkin bump-passed the puck to Nicklas
Backstrom skating toward the Kings’ end.
Backstrom carried the puck into the offensive end, circled around the
Los Angeles net, and fed Oshie in the right wing circle for a one-timer that
beat Budaj over his left shoulder on the near side, exploding the water bottle
resting on the top of the net. At the 16:24 mark, it was 4-0, Caps.
Justin Williams capped the scoring late in the third
period. Muzzin tried to feed the puck up
along the wall in the defensive end, but it made it only as far as Johansson,
who knocked it down and fed it into the middle for Williams. Before Muzzin
could close the distance to defend, Williams pulled the puck to his backhand
and beat relief goalie Jeff Zatkoff on the blocker side to make it 5-0, 16:38
into the period. All that was left was to
preserve the shutout for Grubauer, and the Caps did just that to skate off with
the 5-0 win.
Other stuff…
-- Brett Connolly became the ninth player to record ten
goals for the Caps this season, the number surpassing last year’s total of
eight players to reach double digits in goals.
-- Karl Alzner recorded an assist to reach the ten-point
mark for the season, the 18th Capital to reach that mark this
season. Last season, 16 players reached
that total.
-- Philipp Grubauer’s third shutout of the season made it
nine shutouts for the Caps this season, tying a franchise best for a single
season, set in 1995-1996 and tied in 2014-2015.
-- The Caps sure did spread the peanut butter. Every Capital finished a “plus” player except
for Daniel Winnik (even), and every King finished a “minus” player except for
Drew Doughty (even).
-- Grubauer’s 38-save shutout ties for the seventh highest
total of shots faced by a goaltender in Caps history in recording a
shutout. Brent Johnson holds the record
with a 46-save shutout in a 1-0 win over the Ottawa Senators on April 1, 2006.
-- This was the 12th time in team history that
the Caps scored five or more goals in a game on 20 or fewer shots (they had 20
in this game). It happened to be the
second time they did it in less than a month, scoring seven goals on 18 shots
in a 7-1 win over the St. Louis Blues on January 19th.
-- Marcus Johansson’s goal , his 16th, was just
the fifth he scored on home ice this season and the first since December 23rd.
-- The Caps recorded their eighth straight game on home ice
scoring five or more goals. They scored
43 goals on home ice in that span (5.38 per game).
-- Three goaltenders in the NHL have played more than 500
minutes, have a goals against average of less than 2.00, have a save percentage
better than .925, and have more than one shutout. The Caps have two of them – the only team in
the league that can say that – in Grubauer and Braden Holtby. Devan Dubnyk is the other.
-- More Grubi… He loves his home cooking. Among 53 goalies with at least 250 minutes
played on home ice, Grubauer has the best goals against average (0.64), the
best save percentage (.977) and is tied for the second highest number of
shutouts (three, with three other goalies, behind teammate Braden Holtby, who
has five shutouts on home ice).
In the end…
Is there a less hospitable host in the NHL than the
Caps? With this shutout, that makes eight
times in 27 games at Verizon Center they denied their guests as much as a
single goal. No other team in the league
has more than three shutouts on home ice this season. Those shutouts have come against eight
different teams, four from the East, and now four from the West. One might try to explain this afternoon’s
result as being the product of the Kings having played an overtime game the
previous day, three time zones from home.
There might be some merit in that.
But even if one thinks that might have been a factor in this game, the
Caps played a game of their own the previous day and had their back-up
goaltender playing in this game. It was
a very efficient dismantling of the Kings, a balanced effort. Having outscored opponents over the last
eight games on that ice sheet by a 43-11 margin, other teams can be considered
on notice that coming to Verizon Center is not likely to be a pleasant
experience.
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