WASHINGTON, DC — The Washington Capitals won their first playoff series in seven years on Wednesday, downing the Montreal Canadiens in five games to advance to the second round. The Caps, top seed in the East, won Games 1 and 2 at home, but they did so by relatively close margins, and they dropped Game 3 in Montreal with a score of 6-3.
To hear the team tell it, the turning point in the series wasn’t a goal, a power play, or even a save. Instead, multiple players named Tom Wilson’s Game 4 hit on Alexandre Carrier as the moment that helped shift the momentum.
Ovechkin put it simply when speaking postgame, eliciting a grin from Wilson during their joint press conference.
“Well, you know my answer,” he said. “Game 4, third period, Tom Wilson.”
Wilson’s hit, which garnered criticism from the Canadiens, had a near-immediate impact. The Capitals were down by one when Wilson knocked Carrier down near center ice, but the hit allowed Brandon Duhaime to tie the game just 12 seconds later. That goal would be the first of four in that period, giving Washington a 6-2 win and a 3-1 series lead.
Dylan Strome, like Ovechkin, named the bodycheck when Monumental Sports Network’s Al Koken asked about the turning point against Montreal.
“Tom lays a huge hit. We’re down 2-1 in Montreal, up 2-1 in the series, so that series can kind of go either way at that point,” Strome said. “Tom makes a huge hit. We score right after. We have all the momentum. Get one late and find a way to win it at home. So I would say that was a big part of it.”
The Caps kept that momentum in Game 5, closing out the series with a 4-1 victory. Before the hit, the Canadiens scored one more goal than the Capitals in the series (11-10). After the hit, the Caps scored 8 of the next 9 goals, including four unanswered tallies in Game 4.
Wilson’s physicality extended beyond the single play on Carrier, whether it was hits elsewhere in the series, altercations with heavyweight Arber Xhekaj, or a bench brawl with Josh Anderson that later went viral.
After the Game 5 win, Wilson pointed to moments like those as highlights of the sport. He noted that he expected a rough-and-tumble series against Montreal and credited his teammates for their own willingness to step up to the plate.
“I mean, you know what you’re going to get out of them,” he said. “So once I was able to kind of focus and dial it in, I think that’s why everybody loves the sport of hockey, because there’s guys on both sides of the puck that are willing to do whatever they have to for their team. And you know, they have a couple of those guys. We have a bunch of guys in our room, pretty much everybody, that’s willing to stick up for the guy next to them and play hard.
“And you know, we knew that they were gonna play kind of cheap and try and get us off our game. So it got crazy at times. But that’s why hockey’s so fun, and that’s why we all love the sport and we love playing and love competing. So it was a heck of a physical series, but that’s what playoffs is all about.”
The Caps will likely see more physical games in their future as they get ready to face the Carolina Hurricanes in the second round. If they want to reach the Eastern Conference Final for just the second time in the Ovechkin Era, they know they’ll need to be prepared.
“We’ve had some pretty good games with them this year, some physical games, so I expect a little bit more of what we saw in this series,” Strome said Wednesday.
The Capitals and Hurricanes will face off at Capital One Arena to start their series, with Game 1’s date yet to be announced.
