Max Pacioretty has notched his first point with the Washington Capitals, earning a secondary assist in Sunday’s matchup against the LA Kings.
Pacioretty got on the scoresheet 15:35 into the second period, when Dylan Strome scored to tie the game at two. The play began in the Capitals’ offensive zone after a turnover from Kings center Pierre Luc-Dubois. Pacioretty capitalized, picking up the puck and sending it to Strome, who volleyed back and forth with Alex Ovechkin before putting it past goaltender Cam Talbot.
Goals in back-to-back games.
Leads the team with 15 tallies.
Dylan Strome should be an All-Star.RT if you agree#NHLAllStarVote pic.twitter.com/G3D9rOmgj1
— Washington Capitals (@Capitals) January 7, 2024
Head coach Spencer Carbery promoted Pacioretty to the top line in the second period after Kevin Fiala gave the Kings a 2-1 lead, moving him from left to right wing to play alongside Strome and Ovechkin. The trio scored on their first shift together, erasing LA’s advantage in just minutes.
“I didn’t like a sequence in the second period,” Carbery said of the move postgame. “So that was just a decision to put O with a different group of players and then it paid off.”
Speaking to the media after the win, Strome praised his new linemate for quickly adapting to the mid-game swap.
“I was talking to Patch a bit about it because he said he’s not used to typically playing the right side, but thought it might be a little easier in the D-zone with how hard they were pinching,” Strome said. “He’s a great player. He can adjust on the fly. He’s been around for a long time, and fun to play with those guys. We were hunting pucks down, probably had five or six good chances in the third and didn’t give up too much.”
The helper comes almost a calendar year after Pacioretty’s last NHL point with the Carolina Hurricanes, a goal against the New Jersey Devils on January 10, 2023. Before making his Capitals debut Wednesday, Pacioretty had played just five NHL games since April 2022, missing significant time after tearing his right Achilles twice in less than a year.
Pacioretty earned a shoutout in Carbery’s postgame locker room speech and reflected on his recovery in a short speech of his own.
“That was a rough two years for me boys, and if I learned one thing, it’s not to take things for granted,” he said. “That game proved we have a special group in here, and let’s make sure we never take that feeling for granted.”
Gonna be thinking about this Patches speech for a long time#ALLCAPS pic.twitter.com/yUIJy4XiN8
— Washington Capitals (@Capitals) January 7, 2024
The road back has been far from easy, even once Pacioretty got back in the lineup. He got off to a rocky start in his first game of the season, admitting “it probably couldn’t get any worse than it did tonight for me” following a loss to New Jersey. Carbery highlighted Pacioretty’s improvement on Sunday, pointing at his adjustment to both a new team and coming back to the sport after such a long recovery.
“Each game he’s gotten better,” Carbery said. “I thought it was his best game again. So the second game, better, and now even better tonight. You could tell–and I know he’s probably going to say ‘I’ve got another gear. I can do some more things with the puck’ and I’m sure we’re going to see that–but just from a competitiveness on the puck, making the right plays and the right situations at the right times, I saw that tonight.
“I saw someone that knew it was going to be a difficult game against a real quality team and made a bunch of little plays that were just, to my eyes, that’s the right play, right play, strong play. It’s just consistence. So that’s him just continuing to improve and I know it’ll just continue to get better as he gets more comfortable and more minutes under his belt. He hasn’t played in a long, long time.”
Screenshot: @Capitals/X
