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Saturday sweetness: Caps beat Devils 5-2

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Another afternoon start in February? Oh, you shouldn’t have, NHL. The Washington Capitals came into Saturday’s action on the road against the New Jersey Devils looking to silence two types of demons. The aforementioned Devils and the early start curse.

The Caps started this one hot as Garnet Hathaway slammed home a feed from Justin Schultz, Daniel Sprong deflected a wrister from Brenden Dillon that changed directions multiple times and eventually found its way to the back of the net, and Lars Eller finished a three-on-one break to give the Caps an early 3-0 lead. Nico Hischier would spoil the fun a tad as he got New Jersey on the board for the first time on the man advantage.

Pavel Zacha stormed the net, knocked both Tom Wilson and Vitek Vanecek over, got up, and slotted the Devils second of the day home. Jake the snake Vrana put the Caps ahead for good late in the third. Nic Dowd empty netter.

Caps beat Devils 5-2!

  • Are we sure that was the Washington Capitals in the first period of an afternoon start? The boys played an almost flawless five-on-five first twenty minutes as they seemed to keep everything from New Jersey to the outside and matched that offensively by giving MacKenzie Blackwood a hellish wakeup call in net.
  • Annoyingly, the Capitals have to have the largest average distance away from their own net in terms of where they take penalties. Conor Sheary was the offender in the first as he tripped up a Devils skater as play began to enter the New Jersey zone. The Devils would take only seven seconds on the ensuing power play to dent the twine behind Vitek Vanecek.
  • The Capitals tweeted this out and it’s somehow worse than the time Peter made Vanecek into a literal banana:

  • What an awfully boring second period that saw the Devils as the only team to get on the scoresheet. The Caps weren’t “bad” per se, but there was no urgency to restore their three-goal lead. Neither team had a shot on goal for a stretch of over seven minutes in that frame. Ugly.
  • Evgeny Kuznetsov was a late omission lineup wise which saw TJ Oshie slot in at center. I think that fit works for TJ but it also apparently means he gets less ice time which feels counterproductive in the grand scheme of winning. TJ had played the second least amount at five-on-five (6:25) through two periods.
  • I never thought I’d be saying this but I hate the Caps power play. It has become so predictable and that predictableness doesn’t even seem to feature the Alex Ovechkin one-timer anymore. It’s almost like it hasn’t changed for almost ten years or something. It needs new eyes.
  • This is just an observation based on like two games, but man this Ty Smith kid on defense for the Devils is goodt. With a “t” at the end on purpose. Keep an eye out for him in the future.

  • Jake the snake with a huge goal in a third that saw the Caps go full turtle mode. I’ll expand on what that looks like in this next bullet.
  • The Caps had an 18:10 long shot drought that spanned time in the second and third periods. Don’t do that.
  • Pretty great game from Vanecek overall. Got beat only on a weird bounce off the boards and then when he was stickless after being crashed into by two players. He had a fantastic spell in the third when the Caps seemingly couldn’t figure out their defensive zone coverage for a very long stretch of play.
  • I once got hit in the side of the knee by a JV high school hockey player and I almost threw up. I can’t even imagine taking an NHL slapshot to the grill as Nico Hischier did. Get well soon, Nico.

The Caps will be in the same building, playing the same team, at almost the same time tomorrow, and I’m recapping again. So just change your gameday routine up by a couple of hours and I’ll see you back here.

Full RMNB Coverage of Caps at Devils

Screenshot courtesy of NBC Sports Washington

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