The Caps and their dads visited Minnesota for a Thursday night tilt against the Wild.
The first period ended with no scoring. About a minute into the second, Tom “Laser Tom” Wilson put the Caps up 1-0. About six minutes into the period, Alex Ovechkin buried a nice feed from Andre Burakovsky to give the Caps a 2-0 lead.
In the third, Burakovsky went end-to-end to put the Caps up 3-0. But less than two minutes later Nino Niederreiter got about 78 whacks at the puck and put it home while Dmitry Orlov did nothing that looked like defense. Nick Backstrom put the game out of reach without five minutes to go. Eric Staal scored a late power play goal, but then Tom Wilson added an empty netter.
Caps win 5-2!
- Nick Backstrom drew a penalty about halfway through the first and I’m pretty sure some of the Wild players complained that he took a dive to draw the call. LOL, okay sure guys.
- Backstrom missed some time in the second period after being hit with a shot, but he returned for the third.
- Joe B called Andre Burakovsky “turnover prone” and I’m just gonna mark down my HARD disagreement with that right here.
- Joe B called the first period “sleepy” and on this point we agree. Yawn.
- Joe B also let us know when there was 4:20 left in the game. He did not mention when the clock hit the 1:09 mark.
- Back to Burakovsky, hopefully he’s getting on a roll here. It’s been a disappointing season for the young forward, who the Caps absolutely should not be looking to trade.
- Suggesting that there is a strong and direct link between mass shootings and mental health is inaccurate and serves to further stigmatize mental health. The link isn’t nearly as strong as is suggested these days, and I’d ask anyone with that opinion to please put some time into researching this. Thanks.
- It’s Feburary 15 and Alex Ovechkin now has more goals this season than he had all of last season. His aging curve boggles the mind. He had a four-point night and reached 1,100 career points.
Alex Ovechkin scored his 34th goal in the 57th game of his age-32 season
— RMNB (@russianmachine) February 16, 2018
- Jakub Vrana had his skating legs tonight.
- What’d you guys do to quell the nerves when the Orpik-Chorney pairing was on the ice? Full disclosure, they weren’t as bad as I expected. They both got busted for cheap penalties late in the game, but they both looked capable before that.
- Philipp Grubauer: pretty darn good! He came up huge at times tonight, especially in the third on the penalty kill.
- Chandler Stephenson is a strong skater and he could probably center an offensive fourth line in 2018-19.
- That penalty call on Brooks Orpik late in the game was nonsense.
- This is the dads trip so that means every player will get in a game. Alex Chiasson and Madison Bowey will be back in next game. Who do you think will come out at forward?
#JoeBSuitOfTheNight #CapsWild pic.twitter.com/NKFH2bTjej
— Ian Oland (@ianoland) February 16, 2018
Full RMNB Coverage of Caps at Wild
Headline image: Bruce Kluckhohn
