For the second time in as many home games against the Florida Panthers, the Caps opened up a six-pack – from six different sticks --against the defending Stanley Cup champs, skating away with a 6-3 win on Saturday in the District.
Right from the start, Saturday’s game was a wild one, and it stayed that way throughout the first half of the contest. All nine goals in the game were scored in the game’s first 26 minutes; six of them in the first frame and three in the second. Each of the first eight was scored at 5-on-5; the game’s last goal was scored in a 6-on-5 – delayed penalty – situation.
The first period was particularly wild; the teams traded goals in a first period that that concluded with the clubs all even at 3-3, and John Carlson scored a goal that actually counted. And Florida managed to score its three first-period goals despite being limited to just 52 seconds of offensive-zone possession time in the first period, according to sportlogiq.com.
“I thought we were on track in the first, says Caps coach Spencer Carbery. “I thought we made three big mistakes that end up in the back of our net, but I didn’t have an issue with our first. I would have liked to have been leading at that point, because we had done a lot of good things.
“Offensively, we were really sharp early [and] fast … we were on the puck, with tons of pace in our game.”
Connor McMichael started the scoring with one of the day’s prettiest goals; Tom Wilson sent McMichael in on a short-ice breakaway and the latter got Vitek Vanecek to bite on a dazzling move for a 1-0 Washington lead at 3:15.
Florida got that one back at 6:35 when Sam Bennett scored as a direct result of a Thompson mishandle behind the Washington net.
Carlson restored the lead at 12:25, a center point blast that clanked in off Niko Mikkola’s skate, but looked as though Taylor Raddysh may have tipped it home. During the celly scrum, the Caps wisely kept the goal gremlins from taking this one away from Carlson – who has had at least four goals taken away via coach’s challenge this season – by having Raddysh go first in the bench fist-bump line.
“It must have felt really good for him,” says McMichael. “We were joking in the pile, saying that Raddy should lead the line so that the League can’t call it back. But we’re happy to see the puck drop after that, and Johnny got a well-earned goal there.”
“Yeah, it was a pretty good feeling,” says Carlson of his first goal that counted since Jan. 14, ending a 25-game dry spell.”
It felt good until Florida’s Seth Jones scored from center point to make it a 2-2 game at 13:56.
Exactly a minute later, the Caps answered with another beauty, this one from Anthony Beauvillier. Washington went 200 feet in a couple ticks of the clock; Rasmus Sandin fired a perfect stretch pass to send Beauvillier into Florida ice, and he bagged his second goal as a Capital and his first at home to restore the Caps’ lead at 3-2.
Alas, it was short-lived. Florida’s Jonah Gadjovich scored from the slot to square the score yet again at 15:27, a mere 31 seconds after the Beauvillier goal.
“It was a pretty wild period,” says McMichael. “It felt like we would score, they would score, and vice versa. But we came back in the second. We liked what we were doing with the puck. It our play without the puck, just tightening up on our wall plays and just little touches. I thought we did a really good job of limiting chances after that.”
They did, and they also bagged three goals in just under six minutes to put the Panthers in a deep ditch. Seven seconds into the second, Wilson took a feed from Matt Roy and barreled through the defense before sliding a backhander through the five-hole on Vanecek.
Fifty-two seconds later, Dylan Strome defected an Ovechkin pass home, making it a 5-3 game. And with the Caps on a delayed penalty just ahead of the six-minute mark, Ovechkin fed Andrew Mangiapane at the top of the paint, and Mangiapane tipped home his second goal in as many games overall.
It was also his second goal in as many games against Florida; Mangiapane was one of six goal scorers for Washington on the Cats’ previous trip into town, a 6-3 win on Feb. 4.
Mangiapane’s goal closed out the scoring, and Caps goalie Logan Thompson closed the door tightly the rest of the way, ensuring the defending champs wouldn’t catch a glimmer of comeback hope at any point in the game’s second half.
“That’s what our goalies have done an amazing job of all year long,” says Carbery. “No matter what’s happened – giving up two, giving up one, had a turnover behind the net – okay, it’s 3-3. Can you make the next save for us so that we can get the fourth and fifth, and then you hold it to three?
“And I'm just using tonight as an example, but they've done that all year long. If it's 2-2, can you keep it at 2-2, and just let us get a late third goal to win the game 3-2? And that's what they've done a spectacular job of all year long is making big saves.”
Saturday’s win enabled the Caps to sweep their three-game homestand, their last multi-game homestay of the season. It also enabled them to sweep the season series with the Panthers; they went 3-0-0 against the champs in 2024-25.
Playing the finale of a six-game road trip and with a home game against Pittsburgh looming on Sunday, Florida was trying to even its record for the trip, but two goals in the first minute of the second period put them in a hole from which they were unable to extricate themselves.
“I thought it didn’t necessarily change; it was almost consistent with the first,” says Panthers coach Paul Maurice of his team’s start in the middle period. “We had a real hard time with some of our rush reads, and that led to the creation of the rush as well, with how we let them develop. [They’re a] fast team, made us pay pretty quick, and they’re pretty tough to come back on.”
