What a week it was for the Washington Capitals.

-Three straight division games, three straight wins

-The Capitals have seven wins when trailing after two periods, The second most in the NHL behind Dallas (8).

-The Capitals found another way to win in a game against the NYI that they really had any business being a part of. On the positive side, this team believes they always have a chance to comeback and win and have executed those comebacks. This confidence could pay dividends in the playoffs. On the negative side, it is their overall poor play that has put them in countless situations where need an epic comeback to get points. The Capitals lead the league with seven “6 on 5” goals. If they don’t score those goals, they are potentially 10-14 points back in the standings, flirting with a wild card position. This to me is a sign we are slightly overrated.

-Holtby continues one of the toughest stretches of his career. He has now allowed four or more goals in six of his last 11 games. Samsonov came in for the third period against NYI and made some key stops early in the third to keep the comeback hopes alive. Samsonov leads the league in GAA (2.06) and is #2 at 5on5 SV% (.938).

-Teams are now 0-3-1 all time when openly mocking the Kuzy “bird celebration” mid-game. Thanks, Devon Toews! Seriously though, why poke the bear?!

-Ovechkin earned NHL’s first star of the week posing eight goals in his previous three games, including back to back hat tricks. Ovi now has 26 career hat tricks and back to back hat tricks in three consecutive seasons. Pretty impressive for an “old guy”. He also has more career hat tricks than some franchises have total ( Avs – 24; Wild -19; Devils – 19; Vegas 4). I know Vegas is new but for the sake of an argument, Ovi has had six hat tricks since Vegas came to the league, they only have four total.

-Ovi will break Gretzky's goal record. After this season, he will need to score roughly 37 goals over five years or 47 over four. We should be debating if he wants to play to 1000 goals or not.

-Ovi will also potentially finish his career number one in goals AND number one in hits. The Russian Machine Never Breaks! What a badass.



Thanks for reading!

Brian S

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