The struggling Washington Capitals welcomed both new blueline addition Brenden Dillon and the Montreal Canadiens to town on Thursday night. The former will hopefully stabilize what has been a very inconsistent defensive unit of late.
Alex Ovechkin put a rolling puck past Carey Price to open scoring. Shea Weber tied things up from the point with a slapshot. Lars Eller burned his former team again before Brendan Gallagher’s quick response strike locked things up once more. Ben Chiarot gave the Habs their first lead of the night.
Tom Wilson with 20 seconds left tied the game with Holtby pulled. Chiarot with the OT winner.
Canadiens beat Caps 4-3.
- Two breakaway chances for the Canadiens not even six minutes through the first period. The Caps are hellbent on getting abused by odd man rushes in the last 15 or so games. They got saved from letting the first goal of the game in again by some back-to-back-to-back robbery from Braden Holtby and some quick strike lightning from their captain.
- That captain is obviously Alex Ovechkin, who put home the 699th goal of his career with a faceoff dart sent past the glove of Carey Price.
- The Caps finished up the first period in a good way even though a Shea Weber slapshot (of course) found its way past a screened Holtby. The boys led all of the five-on-five metrics that you like to lead after twenty minutes and stayed out of the box discipline wise against the NHL’s best road power play.
Kempny-Gudas is literally the only "avoid at all costs" pairing on the Caps roster pic.twitter.com/YSfJfgGtEE
— Peter Hassett (@peterhassett) February 21, 2020
- It felt like the puck was in the Caps zone for the entire period. That is not a recipe for success believe it or not. The numbers are u-g-l-y. The Habs at five-on-five held a 30 to 16 advantage in shot attempts, 17 to 9 advantage in scoring chances, and a 9 to 5 advantage in high danger chances. Thank your goaltender.
- “Radko Gudas sat for more than 9 minutes in the middle of the first period (5:27 to 14:34) . Played 4 shifts for total of 3:08 in the period.” – Tom Gulitti for NHL.com. That doesn’t seem like an accident. Gudas was on the ice for both of those early Habs breakaways. We heard rumblings of a potential Mike Green return to DC and methinks that, that is who MG52 would replace in the lineup.
- Lars Eller absolutely murders his former team. He has six goals in 12 games against Montreal.
- There was a moment in this game where the score was tied at 2-2 with exactly 2.2 seconds in the 2nd period on 02/20/20 calendar day.
A reader made us write about Mike Green's cat so here goes http://t.co/dcYrunHQcE pic.twitter.com/4f1mi4MAsX
— RMNB (@rmnb) August 6, 2015
- Team defense…absolutely horrendous. Nothing new though. Not sure why this team seemingly lost any and all semblance of structure about 15 or so games ago. They’ve lost five of their last six on home ice now.
- Brenden Dillon was on the ice for all three Canadiens goals in his debut. I didn’t notice much from him individually that concerned me, it was more his partner John Carlson that left me baffled about four times with just lazy and for a lack of a better term “stupid” decisions.
- Everyone apologize to Braden Holtby because things, as bleak as they seem right now play wise, could be so much worse if he wasn’t standing on his head lately. The overtime winner was a bad goal against, but the Caps don’t get close to taking that one point without him.
Brown #JoeBSuitOfTheNight #CapsHabs pic.twitter.com/1BmcIj5wsp
— Ian Oland (@ianoland) February 21, 2020
Alex Ovechkin’s next opportunity for more history comes on Saturday against the New Jersey Devils. The Caps will have that game and then another the next day against the Pittsburgh Penguins before the NHL’s February 24th trade deadline.
Full RMNB Coverage of Caps vs Canadiens
Headline photo: NBC Sports Washington
