With a major milestone in the rearview mirror, the Washington Capitals played their first game looking firmly forward to the playoffs – and against a very good Carolina Hurricanes team. What looked like the worst kind of game after twenty minutes quickly became a thrilling and violent night of fun hockey.
The Washington Capitals played some of their worst hockey in the first period. Cornered in their own zone, the Caps allowed Logan Stankoven – which is the worst kind of oven – to open up scoring, followed by a scandalous own-goal by Tom Wilson, credited to Jackson Blake.
Washington played miles better in the second period and scored four unanswered goals to prove it. Pierre-Luc Dubois scored his 20th of the season with a power-play goal, the Dylan Strome crashed the net with Ovechkin to tie the game. Nic Dowd scored a sneaky one on the rush, then Tom Wilson pulled a power move against Jaccob Slavin to make it 4-2 after forty minutes.
Jordan Martinook sent a seeing-eye puck through traffic to bring the Canes within one goal early in the third period. The Canes pulled their goalie and Seth Jarvis tied it with 106 seconds left.
Overtime gave us no decision, so…
Shootout bullets!
- Dubois put the biscuit in the basket.
- Blake did NOT put the biscuit in the basket.
- Carlson did NOT put the biscuit in the basket.
- Svechnikov did NOT put the biscuit in the basket.
- Strome did NOT put the biscuit in the basket.
- Walker did NOT put the biscuit in the basket.
Caps win! The Caps clinch first place in the East.
- The Hurricanes attempted 25 shots in the first period. The Caps attempted just 9. That makes 26.5-percent possession by Washington in that measure. Weighted by expected goals it was 22.2 percent. Real hard to watch.
- Never more so than when Tom Wilson shoved Jackson Blake into goalie Charlie Lindgren. Lindgren somehow dodged the concussion spotter, so the only person doing their job on the play was the official who noticed Wilson scored on his own net. That was an execrable play by Wilson, but he probably knew it, and he made up for it later.
- Lindgren looked shaken up after the hit, but he stayed in the game. He had a much lighter workload in the second period and got beat by a puck with a delta quadrant cloaking device in the third. I’ve argued that goaltending is Washington’s biggest problem right now, and it remains so.
- Things were dour until Pierre-Luc Dubois converted on that power play in the second period. He’s now got 20 goals and 64 points, passing a career high of 63 set with Winnipeg in 2023. One of several diamonds found in the rough last summer.
- Passions were high in this one following the drama between these teams on April 2. Brandon Duhaime voiced his displeasure, with fistspeak, against Jalen Chatfield, who could have seriously injured Connor McMichael eight days ago.
- Also participating in the heightened passions was Alex Ovechkin, who hit approximately everybody. This is just one of the four hits he was credited with, and it’s only a sample of the physicality the post-milestone player brought to the night.
- This was the last meeting between these teams in the regular season. The Canes have dominated five-on-five play in pretty much all of them. The Caps are probably gonna see the Habs in the first round, and the Canes are definitely gonna see the Devils. Will they meet again in round two?
- Jakob Chychrun missed the game due to illness. Joe Beninati was also feeling iffy, so he didn’t call the play-by-play, which we reported but people didn’t read carefully, so they got all annoying in our menchies on X, The Everything App, when Joe showed up for the on-ice ceremony. In the meantime, John Walton was a typically excellent fill-in.
- Ryan Leonard looks better every game. Looks like an NHLer. The only reason he should ever go back to college is to pick up his bong.
- Legend Alex Semin was at the game. Normally I’d write something silly and sweet about how that mischievous imp brought me so much happiness in the early years of RMNB, but apparently I’ve got mono, and so I’m on a ton of medicine right now, and my hands feel like boxing gloves, so I can’t do a poetry right now. I guess read these old tweets in lieu?
There’s been a persistent misunderstanding of the Capitals over the past few weeks. I wrote about Ovimaxxing last weekend – how the team had been optimizing Ovechkin to break the record, but that is not why they’ve been struggling. From March 21 until tonight, the Caps had the worst goaltending in the entire league – 33 opponent goals on 22.5 expected goals and 204 shots – or a .838 all-situation save percentage. That has been the predominant factor in having five losses in their last eight games. There’s always room to improve in every facet, but I think people have overdone it in constructing a narrative about how Ovi’s chase has held back the team.
The Caps didn’t need, but nor did they get, good goaltending to beat the Hurricanes tonight. Instead they had the power of friendship – four goals in a frenzied period, with no player getting involved in more than one of those goals. And the shootout.
Next up is a home-and-home with the Columbus Blue Jackets. I haven’t checked the Madripoor Sovereign Fund out-of-town scoreboard, but I think they’re still hanging on to a playoff hope. Should be good.
