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The Washington Capitals and Detroit Red Wings managed to play a completely clean, 60-minute regular-season NHL game on Tuesday night. Neither team was whistled for a single penalty, minor or major, in the Capitals’ 4-1 win on home ice.
While there were certainly some fouls that the on-ice officials could have been called and didn’t, upsetting skaters on each bench, the winning Caps’ locker room seemed to appreciate the end result of keeping both boxes barren.
“Yeah, I mean, I was yelling, I was yelling at them,” Tom Wilson joked postgame. “I was yelling at them, so it clearly didn’t work. I think it’s kind of nice, actually. They, they were letting us play. It’s always nice to get a few power plays, but I guess that’s old school hockey: no special teams, and may the best team win. So we’re happy to get the win.”
The Capitals are the 15th-most penalized team in the NHL this season, averaging 8.5 penalty minutes per game. The Red Wings, meanwhile, are one of the least penalized teams, sitting in the box for just the 26th most minutes (460), an average of 6.8 PIMs per game.
“I think the refs honestly did a good job,” Capitals head coach Spencer Carbery said. “They set the standard, and then the players sort of feed off of that. If you’re right on the line, they’re not going to call it. And that’s what you saw early in the game, and then the players adapt.
“So, I mean, I know it gets guys frustrated, but once they settle in and understand the standard, they’re smart guys. Both teams know what’s going on out there.”
The trade-off for the two teams likely favors the Capitals — the Red Wings’s 28.3 power play percentage ranks first in the East and third in the NHL. They have been particularly hot over the past week, scoring on 30 percent of their opportunities.
“They have an elite talent on that team and they have a good power play,” Logan Thompson said postgame. “So that was our game plan going in, was not to let them get any man advantages, and it worked out tonight.”
Carbery’s Capitals are also far better at controlling five-on-five play than the Red Wings. The Caps have seen 51.2 percent of the shot attempts at five-on-five this year compared to Detroit’s 47.7 percent, which ranks 25th in the league.
“We’re a really good five-on-five team,” Carbery said. “I bet on us five-on-five, so if you keep all the power plays off — I’ll take that all day long. It’s part of who we are as a team. We want to be on that edge, and we’re a physical, engaged, imposing team, and we’re going to lean on you, and we’re going to be right on that edge, but we don’t want to take penalties. We don’t want to be short four or five times, and so any time we get out with 0-1-2, that’s usually a good night for us.”
Tuesday night’s contest was the first Capitals have played without a call on either side since March 6, 2014, when they iced a clean game in a 3-0 loss to the Boston Bruins . In the modern era of stat-keeping (2007-present), those two games are the franchise’s only penalty-free contests.
The 2014 contest against the Bruins featured a Capitals team coached by Adam Oates with a lineup including names like Chris Brown, Jack Hillen, Dustin Penner, Cameron Schilling, and Ryan Stoa. Gregory Campbell, Loui Eriksson, and Brad Marchand were the three Boston goal scorers.
Peter Hassett provided additional research for this story.
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