The Washington Capitals couldn’t get their offense cooking in a late-night game against the Vancouver Canucks and their captain/star/basically-the-whole-team Quinn Hughes.
First up in the scoring: Quinn Hughes, evading Brandon Duhaime on a drive to the net, then going backhand to beat Charlie Lindgren up top. In the second, the goal-scorer was again Quinn Hughes, now from the high slot, finding an impossibly small gap between players’ legs.
Thanks to Pierre-Luc Dubois, the Caps avoided the shutout by crashing the net. At least Quinn Hughes didn’t score again.
Caps lose.
- The streak ends. Until just now, the Caps had recorded a point in every game in January, 12 of them, going back to a loss in Detroit on December 29. RIP to a really fun streak.
- Quinn Hughes is Vancouver’s best and most valuable player, and he’s got a strong argument for being the most valuable player in the whole league. Rick Tocchet knows this and accordingly plays him a ton. These shifts generally went bad for the Caps. I name-checked Duhaime for not stopping his first goal, but that’s a stretch; Hughes was simply unstoppable. What even was this shot:
- Fresh off his shutout, Charlie Lindgren made a surprise consecutive appearance in net. It’s not a big deal. If you hang either of those Hughes goals on Charles, I’m gonna flip out on you. He was fine.
- Lindgren almost had another one of those laugher reverse-highlights, racing back to the net after rushing for the extra skater to make a diving glove save.
- The Caps looked really good early, generating lots of shots and forcing secondary chances. If not for Hughes, this game would have had a different complexion.
- Chychrun rang a post, Eller fumbled a chance against an empty net, and Ovechkin put up more than half a dozen shots. It just wasn’t Washington’s night, and it felt like the frustration got to them around the midway point of the game until the next bullet point:
- Pierre-Luc Dubois scored right as I was writing “shutout” in the draft of this recap. (You’re welcome.) That’s PLD’s 10th of the season. He and Aliaksei Protas (who got the primary assist) are quickly creeping up on Dylan Strome for the team’s points lead.
- Just in case you were wondering, and just because I had already written it: the Caps have still been shut out just once this season: October 26 against the Tampa Bay Lightning.
- Thank goodness for a light-on-whistles and therefore brief third period.
u up? #joebsuitofthenight pic.twitter.com/zYinqX8W0I
— RMNB (@rmnb) January 26, 2025
The worst part of Washington’s season – from a bedtime perspective – still has one game left to go: Tuesday night into Wednesday morning in Calgary. That the “worst part” of the season has included a hilarious win streak that ended only just now should remind us how special this season is – and maybe it should dull the sting of this loss. Sometimes you just don’t have the stuff.
Go get some sleep. See ya next week.
