Despite taking two bench minor penalties for too many men on the ice, despite yielding two shorthanded penalty shot opportunities, and despite facing a two-goal deficit in the back half of the third period, the Caps found a way to scrape a point out of what was an ugly night for them at times. Thomas Chabot ended it for Ottawa in overtime, scoring from the slot to give the Senators a 5-4 victory at 1:46 of overtime on Thursday night at Canadian Tire Center.
Thursday’s game finished off Washington’s longest road trip of the season, a journey that began with a Jan. 19 flight to Edmonton. Five games later, the Caps finally head home with a 3-1-1 mark for the trip, bringing home seven of a possible 10 points.
“I was really proud of the way that we played, other than – obviously – some of the special teams stuff,” says Caps coach Spencer Carbery. “But at 5-on-5 through the whole game and then also the resiliency late in the third period, I thought we poured it on, especially in that last, whatever it was, 12 minutes, call it. I thought we had good opportunities to win that thing in regulation, and get the fifth [goal], so a lot of positives, especially late in that game.”
Washington has not yielded a 5-on-5 goal against since last Saturday night in Vancouver, and it has permitted just five such goals in its last nine games.
Coming into Thursday’s game in Ottawa, the Caps shared the NHL lead – with Colorado and San Jose – for the most bench minor penalties in the League this season, with nine. Before the first television timeout of Thursday’s game, the Caps added two more bench minors to their season total, taking a pair of them 98 seconds apart, resulting in a 5-on-3 of 22 seconds in duration for Ottawa.
The Caps successfully navigated their way through that early penalty trouble, forcing Ottawa goalie Anon Forsberg to make a save on an Aliaksei Protas short ice breakaway while Washington was shorthanded.
Charlie Lindgren kept the game scoreless with a dazzling left pad stop on Chabot’s short ice breakaway a couple of minutes later, and the game was scoreless as it moved into the middle frame.
And that’s when things came undone for the Caps.
Before the middle period was even a minute old, Washington went on what would be the first of four power play opportunities in the second period. All four were plagued by an inability to make a clear zone entry, resulting in a mere two shots on net for the Caps during the eight middle frame minutes in which they were on the power play. That matches the number of shorthanded goals the Sens scored in the period.
First though, Ottawa hopped out to a 1-0 lead early in the second when Ridly Greig converted a David Perron feed at 4:08 on a Senators’ power play.
Seconds after the Caps failed to score on the second of their power plays in the middle period, Connor McMichael sniped a shot past Forsberg from the bottom of the right circle at 7:43, squaring the score at 1-1.
“I saw [P-L Dubois] draw a lot of guys up to them, and he made a great play low to me,” recounts McMichael. “And at first I was looking [Andrew Mangiapane] back door, and I saw the [defenseman] kind of just lock in with him, and I knew I had a little short chance there to make something happen.”
McMichael made his 18th goal of the season happen, matching his total from last season – and his single-season career best – in 29 fewer games.
With just over five minutes left in the second, Sens captain Brady Tkachuk appeared to put his team up by a goal with a shot from the slot, but the Caps were able to take that goal off the board with a successful coach’s challenge; Ottawa’s Drake Batherson made contact with Lindgren in the crease and impaired his ability to make the save on the play.
With 2:36 left in the second, the Caps went on the fourth of those man advantages, the most futile of the quartet. Thirteen seconds in, the Sens were awarded a rather eyebrow-raising penalty shot when John Carlson was deemed to have fouled Josh Norris, who wasn’t even in possession of the puck; it was loose up ahead of both players. Norris scored on the shorthanded penalty shot to make it a 2-1 game at 17:37.
Less than a minute later, with the Caps flailing in their own end, Lindgren made a save on Norris’ bid for another shorty, but Shane Pinto found and buried the rebound to increase the Ottawa lead to 3-1 at 18:15. The Norris and Pinto goals came 38 seconds apart on the same Washington power play, the third fastest pair of shorthanded strikes in Sens’ franchise history.
“Obviously, we have trouble with the entries,” says Caps captain Alex Ovechkin. “You can see even when we had a chance to make a play, it happened. Sometimes it’s happening, and it’s one of those nights when you’re frustrated a little bit. But you can see in the third we change it up a little bit, and [score] two big power-play goals.”
When Dylan Strome scored from the right circle on a Washington power play at 7:58 of the third, it pulled the Caps to within a goal, but Ottawa’s Jake Sanderson got that one back on a man advantage for the home team less than three minutes later.
Down 4-2 late in the third, at the end of a lengthy and already prosperous trip, and with their own beds beckoning back in DC, the Caps could have packed it in. Instead, they went to work.
First, Lindgren kept the deficit at two by shutting down another iffy shorthanded penalty shot, this one off Pinto’s stick. With Washington still on the power play, Ovechkin scored goal No. 876 of his career at 13:01, again cutting the Ottawa lead to one with two seconds remaining on the man advantage.
Strome got the score squared at 4-4 with his second of the night with 5:29 remaining; he found a loose puck in front and roofed it amidst a bit of a goalmouth scramble.
Chabot won it for the Sens on his birthday; the rest of the skaters were battling along the half wall, and Pinto pulled the puck out of the pile and fed the blueliner for the game-winner.
But given the way the game started and the way the second period concluded, this was a good point for the Caps to scrape out of some adverse circumstances.
“I think it's just our character,” says Caps defenseman Matt Roy. “I think we've shown it all year. We have a resilient group, and we don't give up on games. It’s nice to see the guys battle.”
In his last two games, Strome has three goals, one each at 5-on-5, 5-on-4, and 5-on-3. Before addressing media after the game, he offered heartfelt and impassioned condolences to those affected by the tragic air collision that took dozens of lives in DC on Wednesday night.
“First of all, I just want to say our hearts go out to all the victims in the plane crash this week, yesterday,” says Strome. “Obviously, it's just horrible. And [there were] a lot of kids on the flight, a lot of kids that skate at MedStar [Capitals Iceplex] and I know that's close to home for a lot of people in this organization. So our hearts go out to all affected. It’s a terrible, just once in a however long tragedy; it's awful. So just know that we're thinking about all their families and loved ones.”