Caps Overcome Jets in Overtime, 4-3

Until Tuesday night's game against the Winnipeg Jets, overtime had not been the Caps' time this season. Washington had been outscored 7-0 in 3-on-3, extra-session hockey in 2021-22, so when Winnipeg's Pierre-Luc Dubois tied the game at 3-3 with 65 seconds remaining, it wasn't surprising to see the Caps buzzing hard in the Jets' end of the ice to regain the lead in the final minute of regulation.

Not to worry, kid.
Twenty-six seconds into overtime, Tom Wilson capped off a beastly night for himself with an overtime game-winner, taking a feed from Evgeny Kuznetsov and getting it through Jets goalie Connor Hellebuyck to end the Caps' franchise record seven-game overtime skid.

"It hasn't gone without attention," says Caps coach Peter Laviolette of his team's overtime woes this season. "The players have been working at it, and looking at it, and watching stuff. It's nice to get one; certainly it was a power move by Kuzy to attack.
"It was nice to get one. It took a while. We shouldn't be at the record that we're at, but we are. It's good to get one in the column."
All in a night's work for Wilson, who - in addition to providing his usual physical presence and winning the game with his third goal in as many games - helped manufacture the go-ahead goal in the third period and came up with a key shot block during a Winnipeg power play late in the third, prior to Dubois' tying tally.
"I was hoping [Kuznetsov] would do it all himself, to be honest," says Wilson. "They just gave him a lot of room, and he made a nice move. I knew he was going to try and look for me, and just tried to go to the net."
Washington's start to Tuesday night's tilt against the Jets was inauspicious. On the first shift of the game, Dmitry Orlov was boxed for slashing, and Winnipeg promptly took a 1-0 lead at 1:02 of the first on the man advantage. Andrew Copp's shot from the slot missed the mark, but bounded off the back wall and right to Kyle Connor in the right circle. Connor tucked it under the crossbar to give the visitors a 1-0 lead.
Just over a minute later, the Jets doubled that lead when Cole Perfetti netted his first NHL goal on a 2-on-1 rush. The Jets' first-round choice (10th overall) in the 2020 NHL Draft, Perfetti converted a perfect feed from Dubois at 2:20, scoring his first goal in his fifth game in the League.
Around six minutes into the first, Vanecek denied Copp on a breakaway to keep the Jets from extending their early lead, a save that loomed larger as the game wore on.
In the back half of the frame, the Caps cut into the Winnipeg cushion on Alex Ovechkin's 27th goal of the season. From Washington's end of the ice, Kuznetsov sent Ovechkin into Winnipeg territory with a long rink-wide feed. Ovechkin tried and failed to toe drag around Winnipeg defender Logan Stanley, but a late arriving Garnet Hathaway collected the puck and quickly sent a sharp return feed to Ovechkin, who had drifted over to the left circle. The Caps captain swept it home from there to make it a 2-1 game at 16:58.

"He still has that Ovechkin shot that beats a lot of goalies," says Hathaway. "I thought it was the right play at the right time, and that cut the deficit in half. And so we came into the room and we talked about it - I don't think we played terribly, we've had worse periods. And that's when we settled down."
Washington pulled even early in the second period. Lars Eller won a left dot draw in Winnipeg ice, and Connor McMichael bumped the puck back to Orlov at the left point. The defenseman teed up a clapper that found its way through traffic to knot the game at 2-2 at 4:26, four seconds after the face-off.
Both teams executed successful penalty kills late in the middle frame, and Vanecek had to make a pair of strong stops to keep Winnipeg off the board. As the Caps' penalty kill came to an end, Carl Hagelin exited the box and had a breakaway opportunity, but Hellebuyck denied him, and the two teams headed to the third all even at 2-2.
Early in the frame, Nicklas Backstrom won a draw in Washington's end, and Wilson carried into the Winnipeg zone along the left wing wall, pulling up above the circle and leaving the puck for Justin Schultz. Schultz went down low to Protas on the left side, and the hulking rookie went behind the cage and used his boardinghouse reach to execute a wraparound bid from squarely behind the net. The puck clicked off the skate of ex-Caps defenseman Nate Schmidt, then caromed off Hellebuyck's left pad and wobbled over the goal line for Washington's first lead of the night, 3-2 at 4:15 of the third.
"Just a great face-off, we did what we planned," says Protas. "Just playing fast, like we talked before the second period. Schultzy made a great play, Willie made a great stop, delay, and just passed it. So everything worked, and we probably deserved it with our work ethic and puck movement."

Winnipeg pressed hard for the equalizer, and when Nic Dowd went to the box with less than five minutes remaining, the Jets had a late extra-man chance. Five seconds into the kill, Wilson ate a Connor shot from the right point. He was clearly hobbled, but managed to get to the bench when Washington got a partial clear.
The Caps killed off the remainder of the Dowd minor, only to yield Dubois' tying goal on a short cross-crease feed from Adam Lowry. In the final 65 seconds of regulation, the Caps teed up seven shot tries - getting three of them on net - but they couldn't regain the lead and headed for overtime for the 12th time in 40 games this season.
Kuznetsov blazed through neutral ice with speed and entered the Winnipeg zone in a 1-on-2 situation. He curled and dragged his way through the two defenders, and got them to follow him behind the net, leaving the front open for Wilson, who jimmied it past Hellebuyck at the right post.
"I liked the way that we stayed with our game," says Jets coach Dave Lowry. "I thought we had a great start. We did a lot of things right. But look at the team that you're playing. They've got a bunch of world class all-stars on their team, and they're not going to go away. They stayed, they got their legs under them, and they took the game over, but I still thought we did a lot of really good things."