After ten days at home, the Washington Capitals have hit the road, kicking off their middle-America trip with a win over Bruce Boudreau, Eric Fehr, and the Minnesota Wild.
As befitting the game in which Tom Wilson returned from suspension, a lot of raucous stuff happened in this one. Dmitry Orlov opened up scoring for Washington, taking a nifty pass from Lars Eller to beat Devan Dubynuk. The dude Tom himself followed up, converting an Orlov pass for a crash-the-net (maybe too crash-y?) goal.
In the second period, precocious young child Andre Burakovsky backhanded another neat pass from Lars Eller to make it 3-0, but Mikko Koivu exploited a bad clear from Michal Kempny to crack Pheonix Copley’s shutout bid.
Dmitry Orlov capped off a gorgeous three-on-two rush with Wilson and Ovechkin to restore the three-goal lead. A few minutes later, Nicky Backstrom faked a shot to set up TJ Oshie for another lovely rush goal. Matt Dumba (or was it Zach Parise?) scored a power-play goal from point blank in the third period, but that was that.
Caps win 5-2!
Tonight we dance.
- We’ll get to Tom in a second. First, a handful of Caps had magical breakout nights. I’ll name two right here:
- Dmitry Orlov was hands-down the best Caps player on the ice with three points, two of them goals. But right behind him was…
- Lars Eller, who was making plays for the whole hour, including indispensable setups for Orlov and Andre Burakovsky, who badly needed a W, especially after his bro Tom Wilson returned and scored.
- That’s right. Tom Wilson, back from a suspension that was somehow 14, 16, and 20 games long. Wilson wasted little time reminding us what he’s about. He crashed the net to score in the first period, but he crashed so hard he “earned” a goalie interference penalty. (The contact happened after the goal was good, and the contact was mostly between Suter and Dubnyk. Seems like Wilson’s reputation came back from the suspension in tact as well.)
- Also, Tom fought. Welp.
Not unlike New York's hottest club, Tom Wilson's season debut has everything pic.twitter.com/2QZUIeQ75t
— Ben Raby (@BenRaby31) November 14, 2018
- On the macro level, the Wild looked really flat coming into the second period, which helped make Andre Burakovsky‘s badly needed goal inevitable. But while the Caps owned that stretch and vastly outscored the Wild at even strength overall, this was a tighter game than the scoreboard showed, and goalie Pheonix Copley saw more up-close action than I’d prefer in a 5-2 laugher.
- If I had the third worst penalty kill in the league, I’d maybe try to do less of this:
- Did you know the Wild stopped playing Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy” as their goal song so they could put some crappy Joe Satriani song back in rotation? Lame.
#JoeBSuitOfTheNight #CapsWild Brown! pic.twitter.com/CVTjEpCMFV
— Ian Oland (@ianoland) November 14, 2018
Well I think by now it’s plentifully obvious what has been wrong with the Caps so far: too much Dmitrij Jaskin!
Ferreal, while there’s still a ton to work on, I loved the coordinated rush attacks we saw here, and I love that underperformers like Orlov, Eller, and Andre got some time in the spotlight. But in hindsight we’ll all remember this as the game where Wilson came back and picked up exactly where he left off, except without the dangerous hits to the head part. 🤞
