It wasn’t pretty, but early season NHL hockey often isn’t. Coming off the first opening night shutout loss in franchise history, the Caps scuffled their way through a dismal first period, dug out of a two-goal hole in the second, then held on in the third and overtime to claim a 3-2 shootout win over Calgary on Monday night at Capital One Arena.
The win is Washington’s first of the season, and the first in the NHL coaching career of Spencer Carbery. The principal heroes were goaltender Darcy Kuemper, winger Matthew Phillips, and the Caps’ penalty killing crew.
Four days after the birth of his first child, son Caden, Kuemper kept the Caps in the hunt in his first start of the season, stopping 38 of 40 shots on the night, one of which was a Blake Coleman penalty shot try in the third period. Phillips scored Washington’s first goal and set up its second; the former Flame fueled the Caps’ comeback by biting the hand that once fed him, scoring his first NHL goal and collecting his first NHL assist against his hometown team, the club that drafted him in 2016.
“We obviously got outplayed in the first, and Kuemps was great,” says Phillips. “We got back to our game and put a little more pressure on them, and we used our speed a little bit better to get a couple [goals] there and tie the game up. That swung the momentum for us, and we carried it into the third.”
Washington’s penalty killing outfit was dented for a goal in the first period, but it came up large with a pair of clutch kills in the back half of the third period, enabling the Caps to get the game to overtime.
The Caps came away with two points on Monday, and with some cheap lessons to learn as well. The Capitals routinely shortened the ice for Calgary, turning the puck over frequently and fanning the Flames’ transition game. The Flames swarmed Washington early; by the time the Caps managed their first shot on net of the night, Calgary had a dozen of them as well as a 1-0 lead.
The Flames jumped in front on an Adam Ruzicka goal at 4:47 of the first, a tally that came seven seconds after he won a draw in Washington’s end. Ruzicka was parked in the slot, and he converted a Noah Hanifin feed from behind the Caps’ net.
In the back half of the first, Caps’ center Evgeny Kuznetsov was whistled for minor penalties twice in the span of three shifts. Washington was able to kill the first of those infractions without incident, but Calgary doubled its lead on a Dillon Dube deflection at 17:12 of the first, with just six seconds left on the second Kuznetsov minor.
Washington was outshot 18-3 in the opening period.
“They came out firing for sure,” says Kuemper of the Flames. “The shots were pretty tilted early, but it’s nice to feel it early. They were taking a lot of shots, but the guys were letting me see them, and it allowed me to get into a rhythm.”
Aside from wiping away the deficit, the middle period wasn’t much better for Washington. The Caps were still sloppy and loose with the puck, but fortunately for them, Kuemper was dialed in, stopping five more Calgary shots in the first six plus minutes of the second. Just ahead of the seven-minute mark, Phillips finally put the Caps on the board with their first goal of the season.
Seconds after Nazem Kadri narrowly missed converting a feed at the left post that might have made it 3-0 for the visitors, Phillips scooped up the loose puck and carried into the Calgary side of neutral ice, leaving it for linemate Sonny Milano, who carried into Flames territory. As Phillips drove the net at the far post, Milano sauced him a sublime backhand feed, and the former Flame chipped it over Calgary netminder Jacob Markstrom, halving the deficit to 2-1 at 6:50.
“I wasn’t sure,” answers Phillips when asked if he was sure he would score on the play. “I was like, ‘Please come to me, please come to me.’ It was a pretty unbelievable pass, so it was awesome."
Just over three minutes later, Phillips fed Connor McMichael, who slipped a shot through Markstrom from the high slot, tying the game at 2-2 at 9:54 of the second.
Phillips' father Doug was in attendance on Monday, witnessing his son's first two NHL points in his fifth game in the League.
Kuemper ensured that the Flames would not regain the lead. In between the two Washington goals, he made one of his best stops of the night to deny Elias Lindholm from short range. Kuemper thwarted Coleman on the penalty shot in the third, and he and the penalty killers doused the Flames’ power play twice with the game on the line late.
Markstrom made an excellent stop of his own late in the third, denying T.J. Oshie on a breakaway out of the penalty box, following a sharp springing feed from Nic Dowd. The Caps had an abbreviated power play late in overtime, missing the net with their best looks.
In the shootout, Kuznetsov was the only one to score, giving Carbery that first NHL win. For the first half of the game, the Flames were dominant, but they leave town with a single point in the second game of a five-game trip.
“I thought it was a good night,” says Flames coach Ryan Huska. “For a road game, this is a pretty good one for us. I would say when you look at our three games, we’ve gotten better every game and that’s what we want to keep seeing. The way we played tonight is the way we’d like to continue to play.”
The Caps’ bench boss is happy to have the victory, but he’s under no illusions when it comes to his team’s game to this early juncture of the season.
“It wasn’t comfortable for 65 minutes plus the shootout,” says Carbery. “But maybe in a weird way, it’s a bit of a weight off the staff off of our staff and our team. Maybe that just kind of lifts a little bit of weight, because it just feels like at times we’re just pressing and trying to make something happen, and it has gone haywire for us at times.
“We’re trying to find it; I’ll be honest with you. We’re off just a little bit. A lot of our touches, our execution, our decision making at times is [lacking]. And it’s not a lack of care, and it’s not a lack of effort. It’s just that wires are getting crossed, and certainly we saw it with some of the things late in the game where it’s a 2-2 game. Normally, you manage those situations, and you see a very tight game and both teams are sort of protecting. And that was like, it’s back and forth, there’s penalties.
“But the positives coming out of that game, we fight back, we’re down 2-0, we’re under attack, we tie that game up. We manage the situation, and we get two massive kills late in that game to get us to overtime. Hopefully that gets us on track, and it lifts a little bit of weight off us for sure.”
