The Capitals beat the Flames 4-2 last night. The big story was Alex Ovechkin: he went insane.
11 shots.
In one game. Only one goal.
Still, 11 shots. To go with two assists.
It seems pretty crazy. When I looked up his advanced stats, I expected him to have a 75% possession rating, but it was actually only 53% - which is good.
But when you get 11 individual shots, you'd assume the line would have been a lot more dominant. Several of the shots came on the Power-Play, but still, it's clear that Ovechkin's line is content to trade chances - and really, why wouldn't they be?
Kind of a hilarious quote from Backstrom, via the Washington Post's Issabelle Khurshudyan
“He’s got a ridiculous shot,” Nicklas Backstrom said. “If he’s got 11 shots every game, at least one is going to go in. That’s just who he is.”
Backstrom is a great player, but I don't think he understands how statistics work! If anyone got 11 shots per game and didn't score at least one goal, they'd have to be insanely unlucky.
Ovechking only scoring once on 11 shots is actually bad by his standards - he should got at least 1.5 goals !!
Considering Ovechkin's recent inexplicable (unless he's in first place and is sick of the regular season and just doesn't care) poor play (after 300+ straight games with at least a shot, he went shotless in three games recently, and he isn't close to the automatic 50 goals we have come to expect) this game was a relief.
11 shots doesn't have the ring of "Hattrick" or "four goal game" but I'd bet if there was someway to know, you'd find getting 11 shots is more rare than a four goal game, or at least close.
One other interesting note, also passed on from Khurshudyan, but definitely worth knowing, is that when Oshie scored he his 30th goal last night:
Oshie is the Capitals’ first 30 goal scorer other than Ovechkin since the 2009-10 season.
That is a long time between non-Ovechkin 30 goal seasons. But it begs an even more interesting question: Considering they're still pretty good, where would the Blues be if they didn't give half their good players to the Capitals in exchange for nothing?
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