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Upstaged by Tage: Sabres beat Caps 5-4

By Peter Hassett

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January 3, 2023 9:47 pm

Sadly, the Washington Capitals did not score nine goals in Tuesday’s home game against the Buffalo Sabres. They still gave us a good game, albeit one marred by some late, unfortunate penalties.

Tage Thompson (remember that name) set up for a brilliant goal in the first, with Sonny Milano striking back on a breakaway to tie it up, but Tage scored from the Ovi Spot to give Buffalo the lead after twenty minutes.

Tage scored his second of the game early in the second, which clearly bothered Alex Ovechkin, who scored off a set play to bring Washington within one goal.

Nic Dowd tied the game early in the third, grabbing Milano’s rebound. Ovechkin notched his second of the game to give Washington their first lead of the night. SNL funnyman Colin Jost tied it back up with a gritty one in the slot about halfway through the third. That pushed us into overtime, where Tage Thompson completed the hat trick to win it.

Caps lose.

  • Fun game. Buffalo plays a wide open game with lots of quality chances at both ends. The frustration was that Washington had trouble executing on their chances for long stretches.
  • The big advantage for Buffalo was speed, which they used for an aggressive forecheck. Washington I’d say is one of the weakest forechecking teams in the league, so this was big deficit that could be filled only through old age and treachery.
  • Tage Thompson was a throw-in afterthought to the big Ryan O’Reilly trade from like four years ago. And kind of out of nowhere he’s become a superstar. The Caps assigned their best defenders (Orlov and Jensen) against him, and Thompson still lit them up. The overtime winner was practically an own-goal by my reckoning.
  • Like, look at Dmitry Orlov getting positively wheeled on that first goal.

  • Alex Ovechkin, who am feel uncomfortable when we are not about me, scored his 807th and 808th goals, more humbly known as 27th and 28th goals of his season. For the first, Ovechkin tried the same shot twice: a set play following an offensive-zone faceoff. The second was a low-to-high pass from Sheary, who was turned into a great complement to Ovi.
  • Ovechkin has five goals in his last two games, eight in his last five. He’s on pace for 57. Well, 57.4, but I don’t think Gary will acknowledge the decimal.
  • TJ Oshie returned to action after missing the back half of December. He does not look one-hundred percent to me.
  • Laviolette made the lines weird in the third. Strome was dropped to the third line, Eller to the fourth, with Nic Dowd (!!!) centering the second line. I wonder if Laviolette saw some chemistry with Dowd and Milano, who incidentally teamed up on the first goal of the third period.
  • While the game was tied with two minutes remaining, Evgeny Kuznetsov got busted with an offensive zone penalty, a trip that some called soft. I don’t know if I agreed that it was soft, but we can all agree it was an awful penalty to take in that place at that time in that situation. Trevor van Riemsdyk‘s trip gave the Sabres a five-on-three to end regulation and a power play into overtime.

Yet again, the Washington Capitals asked me to watch them play a game, and yet again I was happy with the experience. Even if they were playing poorly, which they weren’t, this would have been a really fun game – and a solid entertainment product. We’ve come a long way from how this team looked in late October. Just would have liked a W.

Headline photo: @T2Va

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