The Washington Capitals put on a clinic on Thursday, and Ryan Leonard was the star of the show. Already on a three-game point streak going into the night, Leonard recorded four points (2g, 2a) in a dominant 7-1 win over the San Jose Sharks, earning his second multi-point game of the season.
Leonard is the first rookie with a four-point game in the NHL this season, and the first to do so for the Capitals since a 20-year-old Nicklas Backstrom recorded three four-point games in 2007-2008.
Making the achievement even sweeter, Leonard’s big night came against close friend Will Smith, who was his linemate for both Boston College and the USA Hockey National Team Development Program.
Leonard’s first point (goal)
Leonard broke a seven-game goal drought to get on the scoresheet late in the first period. Capitalizing on a rebound after Trevor van Riemsdyk’s initial shot, a patient Leonard steadied the puck before sending it over the shoulder of goalie Yaroslav Askarov.
Leonard’s second point (assist)
Shortly after the intermission, Leonard helped lead to another goal thanks to his relatively newfound role on the first-unit power play. After goaltender Alex Nedeljkovic stopped a shot from Jakob Chychrun, Leonard dished the rebound through the crease and onto the stick of Alex Ovechkin, who promptly notched the 911th goal of his NHL career.
Leonard’s third point (second assist)
Leonard later tallied a secondary assist in the dying seconds of the period, setting up Matt Roy for a slapshot before Dylan Strome deflected the puck in.
Leonard’s fourt point (second goal)
But while neither he nor the Capitals had anything left to prove in the third, Leonard saved his best moment of the night for last. Starting in the defensive zone, Leonard blazed down the ice with his teammates well behind him. He snuck the puck between the skates of Sharks defender Timothy Liljegren — still at full speed — then deked around him before beating Nedeljkovic with a sharp-angle shot.
“I’m sure I’m going to see it all over social media and all over SportsCenter at some point,” head coach Spencer Carbery said of the goal.
Leonard now has eight points in his last six games and a total of 18 points (7g, 11a) on the season so far. He now ranks fourth among all rookies in scoring, sitting just two points behind Anaheim’s Beckett Sennecke and Montreal’s Ivan Demidov for the lead.
“He’s going to score a ton of goals in this league,” goaltender Charlie Lindgren said of Leonard. “He’s just got that knack, and he can skate, he can shoot the puck, just a great player. So it’s fun to see what he’s doing so far, and he’s only going to get better.”
Early in the season, Carbery noted that Leonard “wants to produce like Macklin Celebrini,” but emphasized that he’d be judging him by the subtler details of his game rather than expecting him to rack up points. Two months later, the Capitals held Celebrini scoreless on Leonard’s four-point night, and Carbery highlighted his success in his locker-room victory speech.
“Leno had a decent night with four points,” he said.
Carbery told reporters postgame he was impressed but not surprised by Leonard’s recent success.
“The talent and the drive that he has as a young man, I saw that day one,” he said. “He’s shown that talent even going back to development camps and in college. But what he’s doing is, he’s continuing to push, like I’ve said, over the last few weeks, to get better and better and better.
“And he’s very, very driven. And that’s where you’re excited as a coach, because he’s so coachable, and he wants to get better, and he wants information. That’s, I think, a big reason why you see a young man like that continue to just chip away and earn more opportunity and just continue to produce and play better.”
