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John Carlson scores two goals, smiles biggest smile, and gets Will Over Skill robe in brilliant game

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Friday night against the Tampa Bay Lightning, John Carlson was fantastic. The 2016-17 season has been a bit of a struggle at times for the American defenseman. Carlson scored one goal in his first 31 games. He often foiled the Washington Capitals’ power play early in the year with misplaced passes to Alex Ovechkin or point shots that badly missed the net.

Things seem to be improving, however. Carlson has nine points in his last 10 games. Against Tampa Friday night, Carlson was more aggressive than usual, firing a game-high six shots on net. The two goals he scored in the first period gave the Caps stalwart his second career two-goal game.

Goal 1

On Carlson’s first goal, the defenseman took a pass from Karl Alzner and overpowered a shot past Andrei Vasilevskiy’s glove.

 “It’s something we talked about, wanting a good start,” Carlson said after the game. “They played last night and all that kind of stuff. It’s huge. Gets everybody into it right away and I’d be interested to see what happens stat wise when someone scores in that first minute. I think everyone just kind of gets a charge regardless. I thought we played really well most of the game.”

Goal 2

Fifteen minutes later, Carlson struck again, blasting a one-time pass from Marcus Johansson into the far side of the net.

“The first one kinda got a little bit lucky and the second one I made a pretty nice shot,” Carlson admitted.

Though typically reserved Carlson, he unleashed a giant smile after the goal, engulfing Johansson in a big hockey hug. Carlson, though, could not completely the hat trick. Only two other defenseman in the history of the franchise have scored three goals in one game: Kevin Hatcher and Sergei Gonchar.

After the game, Carlson was given the Will Over Skill robe by his teammates. The robe signifies the player that exhibited the greatest effort.

“It’s good so we can try to build off that momentum on the other side of it and I think everyone’s looking forward to a couple days off, shut their mind off a little bit and enjoy ourselves,” Calrson said. “It’s going to be a crazy next month or month and a half with all the games that we play so it’s kind of our last time to relax before that.”

Full Coverage of Lightning at Caps

Additional reporting by Chris Gordon.

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