The Washington Capitals played most of the night on their heels against the Tampa Bay Lightning. The back-to-back Stanley Cup champions owned 54.9 percent of the shot attempts and 92.9 percent of the high-danger chances (13 out of 14) against the Capitals at 5v5 per Natural Stat Trick.
Yet one fantastic shift by Alex Ovechkin late in the second period nearly overcame that all.
The Washington Capitals fell to the Tampa Bay Lightning 2-1 in overtime on Saturday. Alex Ovechkin started the scoring late in the second period with a snipe, but the Lightning tied it in the third (Mikhail Sergachev) and then won it in OT via a Steven Stamkos tally.
Both goaltenders were fantastic in the game. Vitek Vanecek stopped 22 of 24 shots while Andrei Vasilevskiy made 25 saves, including all seven shots he faced on the PP.
It might have been Game 1 out of 82, but Hendrix Lapierre’s first NHL goal might go down as the most memorable moment of the 2021-22 season. Taking a pass from TJ Oshie, the 19-year-old sent a shot towards the net that squeaked through Rangers goaltender Alexandar Georgiev. Lapierre tumbled hard into the end boards, later admitting he didn’t know he scored until he heard the roar of the Capitals’ crowd. The rookie was then picked up and mobbed by a grinning TJ Oshie, which began a raucous celebration on the ice. Lapierre was congratulated at the bench by Alex Ovechkin, who Hendrix was a huge fan of growing up. So much so that he had one of Ovechkin’s fathead’s on his wall.
While that all sounds like a perfect story, there was one thing absent from Lapierre’s goal: no. 29 Lapierre jerseys in the crowd. It’s both a sign of the times and just how fast Lapierre’s rise to the NHL has been.
Alex Chiasson is a 10-year NHL veteran who won the Stanley Cup with the Washington Capitals in 2018. Four seasons later, he’s still not getting the respect he deserves.
Chiasson, who was not offered a contract by an NHL team over the offseason, signed a PTO in late September with the Vancouver Canucks. Chiasson made the team out of training camp, signing a one-year deal on Tuesday. Three nights later, Chiasson took the ice for the Canucks in a game against the Philadelphia Flyers.
His last name was misspelled on the back of his jersey.
By Ian Oland 3 days ago
There was a lot of hype coming into the Capitals and Rangers’ opening night game on Wednesday. But the chatter focused more on score-settling and fisticuffs than goal-scoring and winning.
That hockey violence never developed in the game. Instead, the play on the ice was downright cordial as shown in a TNT mic’d up video featuring Alex Ovechkin.
The Washington Capitals began the 2021-22 regular season with a 5-1 win over the New York Rangers on Wednesday. But before the players took the ice that night, the Capitals’ game entertainment team aired its new intro for the year.
This season’s opening video expertly weaves through a bunch of stock footage but also includes cameos from several members of the Capitals family who aren’t current players. Alex Semin, Sergei Ovechkin, and Millie Mantha are all featured in the 90-second video.
The part that choked us up was the tribute to TJ Oshie’s father, Tim, who passed away in May.
By Chris Cerullo and Ian Oland 3 days ago
Hendrix Lapierre was a top-10 talent in the 2020 NHL Draft whose stock tumbled after head and neck injury concerns scared off teams. Lapierre fell to the Washington Capitals, who traded up to select him at pick number 22.
Being drafted in the 20s was not necessarily the fairytale Lapierre imagined as he was putting up points with aplomb in Midget, but in some ways, what happened in reality was even better. The then 18-year-old center said he was “really, really happy” to join the talented Caps and there was one reason in particular.
“I was a big Ovechkin fan growing up,” Lapierre said on October 6, 2020 after being picked. “I had his jersey. I had his poster on my wall. My first jersey that I received was an Ovechkin jersey.”
Lapierre dug up some priceless photos from his childhood a day later. In one pic, a young Lapierre can be seen rocking an Ovechkin jersey. In another, he poses in front of an Ovechkin fathead while cradling a bunch of trophies from one of his tournaments.
Former Capitals goaltender Braden Holtby was named the starter for the Dallas Stars in their season opener against the New York Rangers on Thursday. It didn’t take long for the Holtbeast to make his impact felt during the game with some stone-cold robbery.
Towards the middle of the second frame, the Stars committed a bad turnover in the defensive zone, giving up a chance right in front of the net.
Holtby, like he did for the Caps in Game Two of the Stanley Cup Final, bailed the Stars out with a mind-blowing save on Ryan Strome.
Alex Ovechkin’s injury status was a major storyline headed into the Capitals-Rangers’ season-opening game on Wednesday. Would Ovechkin, who suffered a lower-body injury in the Caps’ preseason finale against the Philadelphia Flyers, actually suit up?
The day of the game, Ovechkin told reporters he was officially a game-time decision — “you can write that on the Twitter” — despite fully participating in the team’s morning skate and taking rushes on the first line.
Later that night, Ovechkin did end up playing and showed no worse for wear during the actual game, scoring twice and tallying four points. He was the number one star and now leads the NHL in basically every important offensive category.
Naturally, reporters wondered the exact moment when Ovechkin knew he’d play in the game.
The Washington Capitals made a surprise move on Thursday, claiming defenseman Dennis Cholowski off waivers from the expansion Seattle Kraken.
Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman was the first to report the news.
By Ian Oland 4 days ago
