Washington Capitals: Match Ratings for January 2019

The Washington Capitals followed up a stellar December with a horrendous January. Here’s one last look back at the team’s worst month in years.

When I was writing last month’s version of this piece, it was a struggle to find bad things to say about the Washington Capitals. Right now, it is a struggle to find anything good to say about them.

If a great December ended on a bit of a sour note, January was a bitter symphony. The Capitals went 3-6-3 in the first month of 2019 and are currently riding a seven-game losing streak into February. Their last win came way back on January 10th against Boston.

So which games in January were the most important for Washington? Which ones should be remembered at the end of the season as key turning points or indicators of the team’s performance? Or, which games were so fun that they can be rewatched time and time again?

As I have mentioned in previous iterations, that is the purpose of these articles. Perhaps the patterns that are obvious here will still be relevant come playoff time. Or maybe one of these games is just so fun that it must be rewatched. Hopefully, this article helps with that decision.

If you have followed this series of articles this year, you would notice that they had normally been done on a weekly basis. Starting with December, the format has been changed into doing a monthly wrap with less detailed write-ups for each game.

Instead, one or two games every week that I believe are very important will be spotlighted and analyzed. The other games will be awarded performance and entertainment ratings, but will not be discussed. If you disagree with any of the scores I give, let me know in the comments!

While I would like to branch out the scope to more teams, I am unfortunately only able to watch Washington Capitals games with any consistency, so these articles will only look at those games. Without further ado, let us look back at January for Washington!