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Fireworks: Caps beat Canadiens 9-2 as Ovechkin scores hat trick!

By Peter Hassett

 3 Comments

December 31, 2022 6:47 pm

The Washington Capitals wrapped up 2022 with a ferocious win over the sometimes-feisty Montreal Canadiens.

Erik Gustafsson kept his red-hot streak going with an early goal assisted by Kuznetsov. Tipping in Aliaksei Protas’ pass, Garnet Hathaway made it 2-0 Washington going into first intermission.

Cole Caulfield cracked Charlie Lindgren with an unstoppable shot, but Nic Dowd returned fire by crashing the net. Alex Ovechkin finished off a great forecheck by Eller and van Riemsdyk, but Caulfield forced a turnover to get Montreal back into the game. Dylan Strome’s power-play roof shot made it 5-2 after forty minutes.

Ovechkin got his second of the game on a power play early in the third: a classico from the Ovi Spot. With help from Kuznetsov, Marcus Johansson did some loop-the-loops before scoring his 10th of the season. Anthony Mantha scored on a breakaway, and then Alex Ovechkin did the same, securing a hat trick and making it 9-2.

Caps win!

The final Bailamos of 2022:

  • Not Jake Allen‘s night.
  • The Capitals record in calendar 2022 is 45-33-10. Not bad for a bunch of over-the-hill graybeards. They’re now 21-13-5 this season.
  • After the Caps powered to that early lead, they played more defense more than offense for awhile. I don’t know what to make of the Canadiens overall. They’ve got some good young talent but no real depth, bad goaltending, and a coach whom everyone loves. They were meek defending the blue line on the penalty kill but otherwise tenacious in the neutral zone. This game had ebbs and flows and kinda sloppy until the Caps took over the scoreboard.
  • Alex Ovechkin scored his 24th and 25th and 26th, a.k.a. his 804th and 805th and 806th. He’s again on pace for 54.6 goals, which (rounding down) would leave him just 60 shy of Gretzky by season’s end. And both goals came despite his line getting nothing going during five-on-five. It took a brilliant sequence from Eller and van Riemsdyk to set him up for his first goal and a classic setup from Gustafsson for the second. The third was all Ovi.

  • Montreal’s best player was Cole Caulfield. He caught an impossible pass from Nick Suzuki for his first of the night then nabbed his second out of the neutral zone without any help.
  • Erik Gustafsson has six goals and seven assists in his last seven games. Me and Ian will continue to argue about him on the RMNB discord, but scoreboard says he rules. I think I love his passes to the Ovi Spot.
  • The Caps tried all kinds of moves on the power play before Strome scored. We saw three different players take the point as Ovechkin rotated from crease, below the goal line, Ovi spot, and up to the blue line. I like that they’re flexible.

  • As seen above, Marcus Johansson and Evgeny Kuznetsov doing laps around the Habs net before Johansson scored was – for me – one of the most delightful plays of the whole year. Just two finesse dumb-dumbs out there doing their thing.

The Ottawa game never happened. It’s erased. This is the only game that matters right now. It was beautiful.

My friends, this is the last game recap of 2022. The next time I see you it’ll be 2023, so let me wish you health and happiness and strength and solidarity for next year. For me, I’m going drama-free in 2023, so tough shit to all the losers and haters out there, I can no longer hear you. Because I’m free of drama. That’s just how I roll, too bad if you can’t get on my level. DRAMA FREE!

Headline photo: Amy

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