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Caps beat Canucks 3-1, win 10th straight at home

By Peter Hassett

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January 9, 2018 10:44 pm

After whipping the Vancouver Canucks on Tuesday, the Washington Capitals have now won ten straight games at home. That’s nice. Lemme tell you about it.

So Daniel Sedin scored first, assisted by Henrik Sedin – who I am told is a completely different Sedin. John Carlson responded with a slightly dubious goal that I’ll talk about below, and then Lars Eller piled on with a nifty solo scoring effort. The Caps dominated the second period but had just one Kuznetsov marker to show for it.

Caps beat Canucks 3-1.

  • The last time the Caps and Canucks met, the Caps looked terrible. This was different. The Caps dominated, especially in the second period. But it was also a weird, weird game. A deeply weird game.
  • So Michael Del Zotto saw that the net was falling behind Jacob Markstrom. MDZ grabbed the crossbar, but he didn’t immediately push it back up. While he was, I dunno, deliberating about whether or not he should decapitate his goalie, John Carlson fired a simple shot. The Canucks challenged the goal, which would have been fine if the taint around the goal weren’t caused entirely by their own player.
  • Weirdness, part II: Evgeny Kuznetsov‘s goal did not come from his stick. It came from the glove of Erik Gudbranson. During an intermission interview, Al Koken described it as a lucky bounce, because it was, but Kuznetsov bristled at that description. Maybe he was sarcastic. It’s hard to tell with Russians, which is probably half of the reason why we had a cold war – the other half being the military industrial complex cleaving the connection between itself and civilian oversight during the demobilization that followed the second world war.
  • One hundred and two seconds into the second period, Alex Edler got a shot blocked. Then ten minutes and nine seconds passed before the Canucks did anything else interesting in the offensive zone.
  • Brock Boeser did nothing. He is nothing. Hit the bricks, pal, and beat it ’cause you are going out. Thats from Glengarry Glen Ross, mostly. Anyway, the rookie scoring kid had a meh night.
  • Like a bunch of other Caps, Lars Eller has had an up-and-down season. Tonight was an up night. Eller’s goal – for his 200th career point – was a cracker.
  • So, here’s a thing. Early in the third period, Brooks Orpik got a little breakaway. He missed the net, and then Ben Hutton wrecked him with a late, high hit. Orpik crashed into the boards with Hutton crashing close behind. Devante Smith-Pelly was having none of it, so they fought. The officials threw the book at DSP: fighting plus instigator and misconduct. Hutton just got the fighting, which seems wrong. And all of that just obscures the truly remarkable part: Orpik got a breakaway.
  • Solid performance from Philip Grubauer, who is no stranger to the mousestrap himself.

On November 30, the Caps lost 5-2 to the Los Angeles Kings. Since then, Capital One Arena has seen nothing but Ws. Even if everything outside the scoreboard is screaming “oh god oh god this team is a paper tiger and this is not sustainable and the playoffs are gonna burnnnnnnn” – aside from all that, this is kind of a nifty fun time right now.

Full RMNB Coverage of Caps vs Canucks

Headline photo: Rob Carr

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