The Washington Capitals got blown out again on Sunday, giving up five goals or more for the sixth time in their last 10 games. Their latest failing, a 5-2 L to the New York Rangers, saw the Caps get scrappy in the final minutes as more frustration set in.

Capitals captain Alex Ovechkin was tossed with 3:31 left as he decided to spend his final shift making Barclay Goodrow’s life a living hell.

Goodrow hit Ovechkin high and into an official as the superstar dumped the puck into the zone. It’s hard to make out on the telecast, but it sounds like someone yells a loud expletive. Goodrow was likely paying Ovechkin back for a big, clean hit earlier in the game.

Ovechkin got up and skated hard back into the Capitals’ defensive zone to find Goodrow. Ovechkin reached his stick out and slashed Goodrow in the arm. Another possible expletive may have been screamed.

Ovechkin again slashed Goodrow as he tries to get a shot on net, slamming him hard into the end boards with a bodycheck. Ovi then followed the Rangers forward around the ice as if the two were tied together by rope, committing about every stick infraction possible in the rule book: slashing, hooking, cross-checking, and spearing. My favorite was Ovechkin’s slash to Goodrow’s right buttocks.

Eventually, an official had finally seen enough, raising their hand to call a cross-checking penalty on Ovechkin. Once the whistle was blown to give the Rangers a power play, Ovechkin and Goodrow came together. Seconds later, Tom Wilson entered the chat looking to impose his own form of frontier justice on Goodrow.

Wilson was able to pull Goodrow away from the officials just enough to allow the two to exchange punches at center ice. Amidst the chaos, Martin Fehervary got in his first career fight with Niko Mikkola.

It took some time for the officials to figure out the penalties. They decided to give Ovechkin a 10-minute misconduct on top of his minor penalty, tossing the Russian forward from the game. Ovechkin clapped sarcastically as he left the ice.

“I think he’s frustrated that there was something that was missed down on the other end,” Capitals head coach Peter Laviolette said. “So he was frustrated coming back in.

“Listen, our guys played hard with emotion, but there’s some of the goals that we let in; there’s things that we could have and needed to do better defensively. We had numbers back and I think it’s all winding in, right? A missed call, you have to kill the Sheary penalty and then there’s a missed call and the frustration grows a little bit. There’s things I think from a, you look at the scoreboard, those situations, to me, they add up a little bit and you get frustrated. But, you know, probably to be expected.”

Screenshot: TNT