It was not a very good week for the Washington Capitals.
To start off they got beat by the rival Pittsburgh Penguins at home, and were really out performed for much of that game. Then the Caps had trouble getting past the western conference’s worst team the Los Angeles Kings. They then followed those games up with the worst performance of the season with a 7-2 defeat to the Philadelphia Flyers.
It was just a bad week. That is going to make picking stars of the week a little difficult this time around. There is only two games to be reviewed since the Penguins game counted for last weeks stars of the week. Neither game was very good and not a whole lot of guys stood out.
So, here we go! We’ll start with the easy one.
Alex Ovechkin
Without the captain this week we’re probably talking about another loss. Alex Ovechkin dragged his team to a victory against the LA Kings on Tuesday night. The Capitals were down 2-1 more than halfway through the third period, then Ovechkin scored a natural hat trick in just about 5 minutes.
That was his final stat line for the week as well, 3 goals for 3 points. The three points was tied for the team lead this week, the three goals was the best on the Caps for the week.
Ovechkin’s advanced stats weren’t very good this week, but you could say that for most of the team. Out of the nineteen Capitals who played this week fifteen of them had a Corsi% below 50%. Eleven had a scoring chance for% below 50% as well.
Ovechkin had 23 shots attempts while on the ice and 27 against for a 46% Corsi rating. Washington had 8 scoring chances for and 12 against with Ovechkin on the ice, meaning his scoring chance for percentage was 40%. They also had 3 high danger attempts for and 5 against with Ovechkin on the ice.
I’m about to blow your mind here, are you ready? Go get some water before you read this. Or better yet don’t because you will probably spit it out in surprise. Ovechkin led the team in shots this week. He had 7 shots on goal for the week, the next highest was 5 that was shared by Michal Kempny and Radko Gudas. Kempny and Gudas being team leaders in shots shows you how this week went I suppose.
Ovechkin was fairly low in the scoring chances, with only three, and high danger attempts having two. Both are pretty low for the great eight.
It was a hard week to pick stars of the week. Considering Ovechkin dragged his team to their only victory of the week I thought he was clearly one of our stars of the week. Possibly the only obvious one.