The Washington Capitals earned their first real win of the season with a high-scoring road victory over the New Jersey Devils. It was a thriller.
The Capitals played the best period of their season in the first. Anthony Mantha scored on a no-look wristshot, then Dylan Strome scored after falling to the ice, then Sonny Milano finished off a distance-passing sequence to make it 3-0. Total domination. Nothing could go wrong.
The arrogance of the last paragraph: repugnant. The Devils laid the Capitals low in the second with four goals of their own. Toffoli had the first and last, with Meier and Jack Hughes in between.
Dylan Strome kicked off the third period with his second goal, tying the game in an exchange with Kuznetsov. Then my nephew Connor McMichael returned the lead to Washington with a backhand shot. That was the game-winning goal. Alex Ovechkin added an empty-netter.
Caps win!
- Dylan Strome‘s goal was hockey-pretty. Taking a pass from Alex Ovechkin, Strome gets tripped up by Kevin Bahl but is able to put the puck on net, just a smidgen below Jersey goalie Akira Schmid‘s pads.
- That goal gave Alex Ovechkin his 666th assist. That’s the same number of hit points that Raphael has in the House of Hope in the third act of Baldur’s Gate III. Ovechkin ranks 8th in career assists among active players. I rolled gnome bard, heavy RP out-of-combat, no min-maxing, a bit of barrelmancy for fun. Alex Ovechkin seemed more interested in passing tonight than he did in shooting on his own. BG3 has to be up there with TOTK for GOTY though, right? Ovechkin’s ENG is the 824th goal of his career.
- We cannot go a couple days without a reminder that Anthony Mantha is on the trade block, so I’m bonus happy that he scored tonight, his first goal since March 23. I think it’s clear by now that I have a complicated relationship with hockey clichès, but that was indeed a goal scorer’s goal – a no-looker that tricked Akira Schmid. That’s the kind of goal that gets scored by a goal scorer. Mantha also got an assist on the McMichael goal, so that’s a very nice night for a controversial guy. He might’ve been Washington’s best player outside Strome. Inside Strome it’s too dark to see who was best.
https://twitter.com/capsreplays/status/1717328515480138139
- Hunter Shepard made his NHL debut. He was great in the first period. The Devils generated 17 scoring chances in the second period, during which Shepard surrendered four goals. That was a very, very tough period to backstop – and a very difficult game overall. And it was a win.
- Early in the third, Rasmus Sandin put a hip check on Luke Hughes, which sent the latter out of the game for a chunk of the game. Sandin absorbed a heavy, stiff hit from Jonas Seigenthaler a few minutes later, and then he left the game as well.
- Sonny Milano briefly had a two-goal game, but it was called back for offsides. It was a razor’s-edge close, but it was the right call.
- TJ Oshie‘s been an unfortunate combination of unlucky and tragic this season. He’s had a ton of offense (I think he leads the team in individual expected goals) but remains without a goal and has just one point to his name – the primary on Milano’s goal tonight. Oshie really got smoked on the Meier goal. I’m in knots over what I should expect from him this season.
- Connor McMichael GWG. That feels good. Hopefully the first of many.
Again no Joe B suit, but he’ll be back this weekend. In the meantime, in honor of Shepard:
Folks, it’s a win. A real one won, not some fake shootout win. There was a collapse in the middle of it, but they scored and then they scored some more, and in the end the score was good. I’ll take it, and you should too.
Headline photo: @ZanderrK_
