The Washington Capitals are playing the San Jose Sharks on the third game of a four game road trip out west. The Caps won in overtime in their previous game against Anaheim in overtime thanks to a Tom Wilson shot. The team is playing better defensively since trading Orlov and losing two more blue liners due to injury.
The injuries with the Caps have been building up all season, and facing adversity is nothing new to this team. Nick Jenson, and Martin Fehervary both left the game against the Ducks with injuries and are listed as day to day. The team also traded Dmitri Orlov to Boston, and has lost John Carlson to a long term injury which means, call ups from the Hershey Bears are happening almost all the time. Alex Alexeyev played increased minutes due to the injuries and played phenomenal. He also had over 25 minutes of time on ice, which was the second most behind Trevor Van Riemsdyk who notched 25:58 minutes of time on ice. In just 13 games played all season for Alexeyev, to notch those kinds of numbers is very impressive.
The Sharks goalies have a combined record of 17-29-11 which is horrendous. Reimer has a goals against average of 3.35 per game, which Kahkoen has a goals against average of 3.51 and both of their save percentage numbers are below 900 for the season so far. In comparison, Kuemper has a goals against average of 2.76 while Lindgren is at 2.74. The Caps goalies have a combined record of 30-27-6. In light of these stats between the goaltenders, some other stats are very close and equal.
Some of the stats that are close and almost equal, are the Caps score an average of 3.02 goals for while only giving up an average of 2.97 goals per game. The Sharks on the other hand score an average of 2.94 goals per game, while giving up a whopping 3.65 goals per game on average. The power play is also about equal at the Caps scoring 20.9 average success rate for the power play, while the Sharks are at 18.3.
This is the second game in the season series, and the Sharks won game one, by a score of 4-1.
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