Capitals: Stars Of The Week – Ovechkin Saves The Day

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.

T.J. Oshie

Now it gets hard. Who do you put on stars of the week in a week where nearly nobody stood out? We’ll have to go with stats and T.J. Oshie had some good numbers this week.

Oshie was one of three guys to have three points this week, tied with Ovechkin and John Carlson. He had 1 goal, a power play goal against the Flyers, and added two assists. Both of those assists were primary assists.

Oshie was by far the best Capital in the advanced stats department, at least in terms of shot attempts. His 59.46% Corsi rating was more than 7% better than the next highest number, that being Nicklas Backstrom with a 52.08 Corsi%.

Oshie was also one of four Capitals to post a scoring chance for% over 60% and he was the only guy not on the third line with a percentage that high. Oshie’s final number was 62.50% which was fourth best on the team this week. He added 5 high danger attempts and 2 against while on the ice.

Oshie’s shooting percentage was 100% this week, he only registered one shot on goal all week and he tickled the twine with said shot. He had two individual scoring chances and zero high danger attempts this week.

Clearly not the best week we’ve ever seen, but he put up some points and his advanced stats were good. That’s better than most of the team this week and thanks to that he deserves to be one of our stars of the week this week.