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Caps beat Hawks 4-2 as Dowd scores two

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A tired Washington Capitals team defeated a tired Chicago Blackhawks team in a game they darn well should have won. It was close for a while, and then it really wasn’t, but then maybe it was again for a moment?

After a silent first period, the Hawks struck first, on their fourth shot of long and heavy shift in the Caps’ zone. I guess that just pissed the Caps off? Anthony Mantha scored a rush goal after a great pass from Connor McMichael, then Dylan Strome exploited Oshie’s physicality for a goal, then Nic Dowd got greasy in the creasy. Dowd scored again in the third, weaving the puck through traffic. On a late-game power play, Connor Bedard sent a great pass to Connor Murphy to make it 4-2.

Caps win!

  • The Caps held their ground in a sludgy first period, but by the end of the second period they were convincingly controlling play. That’s what I expect against the 2023 Hawks.
  • Connor McMichael played in his 100th game tonight. No one really saw this player coming. He went from obscurity to anchoring Washington’s best line without any years of smug, tedious sportsblogging in between the two. Check out this pass:

  • That pass set loose Anthony Mantha for his seventh of the season. He’s got points in three straight. I think McMichael has really opened up Mantha’s game. Together they excel at the transition game – with McMichael setting up the rush and Mantha firing on it. That’s something Washington hasn’t been good at in a long time, and it’s so welcome.
  • “He just knew I was going to get on my horse and try to get that breakaway,” Mantha told Al Koken tonight. “He flipped it into the perfect area and I happened to finish on the backhand.”
  • TJ Oshie falls down a lot; we’ve covered this. This is established in the research, in the case law. But when he falls after leveling Alex Vlasic and disrupts the Hawks enough for Dylan Strome to score, well that’s everything I love about hockey: a lot of speed, a bit of violence, and some finesse too. And credit to Joel Edmundson for getting his first point as a Cap.

  • At the other end of the ice, Strome and Ovechkin really struggled on the Kurashev goal. Strome was uncharacteristically weak trying to secure possession, and Ovechkin seemed kinda helpless as the Hawks generated chance after chance.
  • He didn’t show up on the scoresheet, but I could feel Evgeny Kuznetsov really trying out there. Dialed in at long last.
  • Beck Malenstyn got busted for two trips in this one. He really could have used a goal, but Nic Dowd stole it. Ha. This was Dowd’s fourth two-goal game. His last came almost exactly one year ago, in a game I called The Nic Dowd game.
  • Tom Wilson and TJ Oshie got early exits. Wilson rammed a Hawks player in the final two minutes, and then did whatever you do to warrant a “Delay Game – Equipment” penalty. (UPDATE: The NHL later recoded that penalty to be Unsportsmanlike.) Oshie I think was just excessively sassy. I’d be even more flippant, but those penalties really did almost blow the game.

The Caps have a few days off and then they simply have to beat the Flyers on the road.

Headline photo: Cara Bahniuk, who posted updates on our Instagram Story

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