J.T. Miller’s goal with 4.8 seconds remaining in overtime lifted the Vancouver Canucks to a 3-2 victory over the Capitals on Sunday afternoon at Capital One Arena. Both teams were playing for the third time – and in the third different city – in a span of less than 72 hours, and both squads played hard and tight over nearly 65 minutes of compelling and competitive hockey on Sunday afternoon.
Up until Miller’s goal late in overtime, the two sides traded goals in the first and did so again in the second. They played to a scoreless third, and both sides had some looks and chances in overtime. Caps’ center Connor McMichael had a pair of excellent opportunities in the extra session, only to be denied by Vancouver goaltender Thatcher Demko. Washington blueliner Rasmus Sandin rang a one-timer off the side of the post, and the Caps needed a huge save from Darcy Kuemper to thwart Brock Boeser’s bid from the top of the paint.
With seconds left in overtime, McMichael tried to send John Carlson out of the Washington zone, but Miller intervened and beat Kuemper with a quick snap shot, swinging the second standings point into the Canucks’ column.
“Tough finish,” says Carbery. “Guys competed hard in that game. We played hard in that game, and both sides [did]. That was – for the circumstance and both teams playing a [Saturday] afternoon game – extremely competitive.
“I thought the game was very quick, the forecheck pressure on both sides of the puck was extremely high. We did some really good things inside of that. They did some things that stressed us, but it’s just disappointing in the way that it ends. It’s just a tough mistake from a young player, but we’ll learn from it.”
McMichael’s teammates were quick to console him on the ice, and he shouldn’t hang his head over it. Mistakes are a part of the game, and he played noticeably well throughout the weekend.
“His teammates will probably play the largest role in that,” says Caps coach Spencer Carbery, of McMichael shaking off the miscue. “I’ll probably talk to him when we get back in here on Tuesday. He’ll learn from it, that’s the bottom line. I don’t need to tell him anything he doesn’t know, just that you can’t make that play in that situation; you’ve got to make sure you look after the puck there.”
Washington jumped out to an early 1-0 lead at 1:08 of the first when Nicolas Aubé-Kubel put a perfect feed to the net front for a hard-charging Nic Dowd, who expertly redirected it past Demko, the third straight game in which the Caps got on the board first.
Vancouver answered back at 11:09 of the first on a Connor Garland goal in transition.
Just ahead of the midpoint of the middle period, Caps’ captain Alex Ovechkin restored his team’s one-goal lead with help from a fortuitous bounce off a defender’s skate; Ovechkin had been trying make a feed to a wide open T.J. Oshie at the back door to complete what would have been a tic-tac toe sequence.
Ovechkin’s goal gives him his first five-game goal-scoring streak in nearly three years, since a five-game spree produced six goals from March 11-19, 2021. He now has 13 goals on the season and 835 for his NHL career, leaving him 60 shy of passing Wayne Gretzky (894) for the all-time NHL record.
The Canucks answered quickly this time, squaring the score on a Nils Hoglander backhander to the shelf off the rush. That goal came at 8:47; it was scored as the Ovechkin goal was being announced in house.
Neither side scored in the third, but the Caps had to snuff out a late Vancouver power play in order to get the game to overtime.
Coming off their best 60-minute performance of the season on Saturday in a 3-0 win over the Bruins in Boston, the Caps were able to stack up a second straight strong performance on Sunday against an elite Vancouver team, and one in which they played well enough to win. But in pulling three of a possible four points out of a weekend set of back-to-backs – Washington’s League-leading 11th set of games on consecutive days thus far this season – has them feeling better about their overall game during this critical juncture of the campaign.
“You can tell a huge difference,” says Kuemper. “We’ve got everybody on the same page, we’re communicating out there, working for each other, and we’re back to playing the way we want to. It sucks to lose in overtime there, but two really tough teams and we got three points. We see the recipe for success, and now it’s up to us to consistently go out and do it.”
The Caps have some ground to make up and some teams to climb over in the standings, but if they can continue to string together games like the two they played this weekend – against the top two teams in the League – they’ll at least give themselves the best opportunity to do so.
