Caps Face Oilers in Edmonton
A night after claiming a 5-4 comeback win over the Flames in Calgary, the Caps continue their tour of Western Canada when they pay a visit to the Oilers in Edmonton on Wednesday night.
Caps captain Alex Ovechkin scored a pair of goals in Tuesday's win over the Flames, giving him 766 career goals to move him into a tie for third place with Jaromir Jagr on the NHL's all-time goals list.
Washington was down 2-0 midway through the second period before Conor Sheary and Ovechkin scored, enabling the Caps to enter the third period all even at 2-2 against the Flames, who came into the contest with a gaudy 14-1-1 mark in their previous 16 games, and with just four regulation losses in their 24 home games (15-4-5).
Calgary retook the lead early in the third, but the Caps again bounced back. Anthony Mantha scored the tying tally at 8:21 of the third and Nic Dowd scored at 11:50 to give Washington its first lead of the game.
With the Caps up 4-3 late in the third, Ovechkin scored an empty-net goal from the red line, tying Jagr and giving the Caps a two-goal cushion with 1:48 left. That goal proved to be important when Elias Lindholm scored his second goal of the night - and his fifth goal against Washington in just two games this season - to make it a 5-4 game.
Ovechkin was on the ice again after the Lindholm goal, and he narrowly missed another empty-net bid that would have given him a hat trick and sole possession of third place.
Washington got goals from each of its four lines in Tuesday's victory, which also gave the Caps their first three-game winning streak since Nov. 24-28. The streak immediately follows Washington's only three-game regulation losing streak of the season.
"It's important, especially tonight with the back-to-back [Wednesday]," says Caps coach Peter Laviolette. "It's nice to be able to get that roll on the bench. I thought Lars Eller's line with Sheary and [Connor] McMichael was really good. They were really strong in the way they played the game.
"It was nice to see Axel [Jonsson-Fjallby] chip in out there [with an assist], and Dowder had a big goal. [Mantha] coming off his injury; that's a big goal as well. And Shears is hot right now, so there's a lot of good things out there."
Sheary and Ovechkin are both hot at the moment. Sheary has four goals in his last four games, and Ovechkin has seven goals and 10 points in his last eight games.
Washington has won six of its last eight road games, and it will now look to match its longest winning streak of the season - a four-game spree from Nov. 8-14 - on Wednesday against the Oilers.
"I think it's important to just get on the plane, get to the hotel and get to bed," says Dowd. "This is a really fast team [Wednesday], and they beat us last time we played them, and they also lost to Calgary [Monday] night. So they're going to be a really hungry team in their building."
Dowd refers to the previous meeting between the Caps and the Oilers, just over a month ago in Washington in the final game prior to the All-Star break for both teams. Edmonton roared out to a 3-0 lead before the first television timeout, chasing starting netminder Ilya Samsonov to the bench after he yielded three goals on four shots in just 5:07 of work.
Washington gradually clawed its way back into that game, and the Caps eventually pulled even with the Oilers at 3-3 on Evgeny Kuznetsov's goal in the third period. But with Washington on the power play late in the third, the Oilers forged ahead on a shorthanded goal from Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, and they went on to win, 5-3.
Just over a week later, the Oilers relieved coach Dave Tippett of his duties, elevating Jay Woodcroft to the post from AHL Bakersfield. Woodcroft also has 10 years of experience as an NHL assistant coach with San Jose and Edmonton, and three years of experience as a video coach with Detroit, where he earned a Stanley Cup ring with the Wings in 2008. He is the brother of former Caps video coach Todd Woodcroft.
Edmonton won each of its first five games with Woodcroft behind the bench, but the Oilers have slipped some since. The five-game winning streak matched their longest streak of the season to date, but they've gone 2-5-1 in eight games since. Most recently, they fell 3-1 to the Flames in Calgary in the makeup game of a postponement of a game that was originally slated to be played on Dec. 27.
