Caps Climb Past Cats, 6-1

For the first time in more than three years, the Caps opened up Capital One Arena to capacity for a playoff game, Saturday afternoon's Game 3 of the first-round Stanley Cup Playoff series between the Capitals and the Florida Panthers. The crimson-clad crowd had plenty to cheer about all afternoon, and it went home happy after seeing the Caps score six unanswered goals in an impressive 6-1 victory over the Panthers.

With Saturday's win, the Caps take a 2-1 lead in the series. They'll host the Panthers here again on Monday night in Game 4.
"Playoffs have their swings in momentum," says Caps right wing T.J. Oshie. "A team wins one game, the other team's going to make some adjustments and come at you twice as hard the next game. They did that in Game 2, and it was our turn to respond in Game 3.
"I thought the boys did a great job from the drop of the puck all the way through. The score might have been 6-1, but we didn't score our first goal for a while; we had to grind it out for a little while and just keep going and going and going, Sammy was great tonight, and a really good team effort.
"Sammy" refers to Caps goaltender Ilya Samsonov. Making his first start in the 2022 playoffs, Samsonov claimed his first career playoff victory with a stellar 29-save performance. He was supported by a timely Washington attack that featured two power-play goals, a goal within the last 75 seconds of each of the three periods, and six different goal scorers.
Samsonov made his biggest stop midway through the contest with the game even at 1-1. Claude Giroux sent a cross-crease feed to Aleksander Barkov, who scored on a similar play in Florida in Game 2. This time, Samsonov calmly kicked it out with his left pad, starting the rush that led to the go-ahead and eventual game-winning goal.
"Boom, boom, pass, pass, save!" says Samsonov, in recounting the sequence after the game.
Marcus Johansson scored seconds later to lift the Caps into the lead and they gradually and methodically added to that cushion right to the game's final minute.
"The second [period] was his best," says Caps coach Peter Laviolette of Samsonov's performance. "He had the one in tight [on Barkov], there was a couple that he had through traffic that were really good. I thought he was sharp all night, but the best period was the second period."
Things started inauspiciously for the Caps, who fell down a goal on Florida's second shot of the game. The Cats got the jump on the Caps in transition, Anthony Duclair's cross-ice feed sent Jonathan Huberdeau into Washington ice, and he beat Samsonov with a wrist shot from above the left circle at 2:45 of the first.
Aside from that early hiccup, the Caps turned in a solid first frame for the third time in as many games in the series. Their first power play didn't produce any shots, but they pulled even on the man advantage in the final minute of the opening period.
Seven seconds after Panthers defenseman MacKenzie Weegar was seated for holding the stick of Caps winger Garnet Hathaway, Oshie evened the score with a tip-in of Alex Ovechkin's shot from the right point. Oshie's goal came at 19:34, enabling the Caps to get to the room for first intermission all even instead of down a goal.
In the second, the Caps had to kill off a pair of early Florida power plays, and they didn't have the puck much in the front half of the middle frame. But seconds after Samsonov's big stop on Barkov, Washington took its first lead since Game 1.
Carrying into Florida ice down the left side, Caps winger Anthony Mantha cut toward the cage and put a backhander toward the net. Panthers defenseman Ben Chiarot blocked it, and it bounded right to Johansson, who backhanded it to the shelf for a 2-1 Washington lead at 9:51 of the second.
Samsonov made another excellent stop on Weegar late in the frame, and that save loomed larger when the Caps were again able to follow it up with a goal about two minutes later.
Hounded by a Florida defender in the corner, Mantha still managed to get the puck to the front for Nicklas Backstrom, and Bobrovsky made a good save on his shot. Once again, Johansson was right there to retrieve the rebound. This time, he fed Trevor van Riemsdyk, who had crept in from the left point. From the top of the left circle, van Riemsdyk picked his corner and fired it home, putting the Capitals up 3-1.
On the very next shift in Washington ice, van Riemsdyk laid out to deny a feed from Huberdeau to Sam Reinhart after the Caps turned it over high in their zone, a play that enabled the Caps to carry a two-goal lead into the second intermission, their first lead at any intermission of this series.
Ovechkin joined the scoring parade with a power-play goal in the third. After the Caps won a board battle for the puck, Conor Sheary sent it to Ovechkin on the weak side, and the captain hammered it home from his office for a 4-1 Washington lead at 10:25 of the third.
After Florida pulled Bobrovsky for an extra attacker, John Carlson fired a shot from behind his own net to the center of the vacated cage, making it 5-1 with 4:20 remaining.
Hathaway put the icing on the cake with a shot from the slot in the game's final minute, the fifth goal surrendered by Bobrovsky.
"So far, the story written right now is that they've outcompeted us right now, outwilled [us], pretty much in every puck battle, every area," says Florida interim coach Andrew Brunette. "it's something we're going to have to figure out here."
With an average of 4.11 goals per game in the regular season, Florida was not just the League's highest-scoring team this season, but its highest scoring in more than a quarter of a century, since 1995-96. But the Caps have limited the Cats to two or fewer tallies in two of the three games of the series to date.
"I think we've got to just stick to our game plan," says Huberdeau. "I think we're playing a little nervous. We're not playing the game that we should play, and I think we're a way better team. Obviously, tonight happened and we've just got to forget about it. That's playoffs. We're down 2-1, and next game's going to be important, especially being here."