The Caps beat the Jets, no one cares – ALEX OVECHKIN SCORED 600 GOALS. (Not all in this game, but like cumulatively in his career.)
Yeah. Alex Ovechkin scored during a 5-on-3 for get his 599th career goal and to reclaim the league’s scoring lead. The game lead, however, was lost less than a minute later when Nikolaj Ehlers scored after a bad defensive-zone turnover by Lars Eller.
In the second period, Alex Ovechkin scored the 600th goal of his career, joining just 19 other players in history of the league.
Winnipeg got much more aggressive in the third period, then white-hot Patrik Laine notched his 41st of the season to tie the game and force overtime. The Caps dominated play in extra time, then Evgeny Kuznetsov ended it!
Caps beat Jets 3-2 in overtime!
- TJ Oshie had two penalties and Lars Eller had a bad turnover and that’s all the bad things I’ll say about anyone on the Caps tonight.
- Alex Ovechkin‘s first goal was only sorta an Ovi Shot from the Ovi Spot. By location? Sure. But it came during 5-on-3 rather than 5-on-4, and it was not a one-timer. Instead, Ovi cradled the puck off a pass from Carlson and escorted to the threshold of his spot to beat the Jets goalie, whose name makes me anxious to spell from memory, so I’ll just copy/paste from the scoresheet HELLEBUYCK, CONNOR. Okay.
- That goal came while beloved ex-Cap Matt Hendricks served time in the penalty box for tripping Nick Backstrom. In the second period, another beloved Mathieu Perreault did two minutes for tripping.
- Aside: We tend to sleep on the Perreault trade (to Anaheim for John Mitchell and a fourth round pick they’d return to Anaheim in exchange for Dustin Penner). Penner played 18 minutes for the Caps, scoring one goal and nabbing two assists. Mitchell never touched the big leagues. Meanwhile, Perreault has scored 74 goals and 133 assists in 323 games, all the while driving play among the best in the league. What a disaster. At least Erat got assists.
- Back to tonight: Some might call Ovechkin’s milestone goal “ugly.” It was a net-front scramble with at least three red uniforms taking stabs at the puck in front of Winnipeg goalie, um, HELLEBUYCK, CONNOR. That is not an ugly goal. Plural Caps player crashing the net is the most beautiful sight, especially when followed by a goal siren and glove kiss.
- The Caps celebrated Ovi’s big goal with an amped-up tribute video and a bunch of prerecorded congratulations from famous folks who must have felt weird congratulating Ovi for something he hadn’t done at the time they recorded it.
- To keep the Rocket Richard scoring race going, Patrik Laine scored in the third period. He’s got goals in six games straight and 16 goals in his last 10 games. Grubauer was left out to dry on that one.
- Laine’s goal was just one moment in a third period that was dominated by the Jets. That frame saw Andre Burakovsky suspiciously held out of a few early shifts only to put up a nice scoring chance, plus TJ Oshie getting cross-checked by Mathieu Perreault to deny the snakebite volunteer his first goal since the late eighties.
- The Caps fought back in overtime, owning the puck and pressing play. Kuzy’s goal felt inevitable in retrospect.
#JoeBSuitOfTheNight #CapsJets pic.twitter.com/aEfxTCipNw
— Ian Oland (@ianoland) March 12, 2018
I don’t wanna do some hokey philosophical thing here again. You know the drill by now. Alex Ovechkin is the best goal-scorer in hockey history. If you’re reading this right now, you already know and appreciate that, and you’re with us in feeling a sense of gratitude for every magical moment we’ve watched the dude make happen. 🐐
Headline photo: Patrick McDermott
