It wasn’t pretty early, and it got a little dicey late, but the Caps prevailed by a 4-3 count over the Detroit Red Wings on Thursday night at Capital One Arena. Washington’s victory in the second of its six-pack of exhibition games improves its record to 1-0-1.
“The first period wasn’t great,” assesses Caps coach Spencer Carbery, “but I thought we got a lot better as the game went along. I liked a lot of things – collectively as a group and individually – through the second and third period. A ton of good stuff.”
Washington dressed a lineup that included a bevy of its core veteran forwards, as well as its ostensible top blueline pairing of Rasmus Sandin and John Carlson. The Caps also suited up a pair of recent high draft picks – wingers Ivan Miroshnichenko and Andrew Cristall – along with four young defensemen who are all vying for a temporary opening on the team’s blueline to start the season.
The veterans played well, as did Miroshnichenko, Cristall and Connor McMichael, and it was enough to give the Caps their first victory of the preseason, and the first for Carbery. Following the game, Carbery singled out veterans Alex Ovechkin, John Carlson and Nicklas Backstrom for their play.
“I felt like they were leading the charge in terms of a lot of effort plays, a lot of compete situations,” says Carbery of his trio of vets, all of whom were seeing their first action of the preseason on Thursday.
Carbery praised Ovechkin and Carlson for specific defensive plays and gave Backstrom kudos for going for a line change on the sequence that resulted in the fourth Washington goal.
The Caps were outplayed in the first period, but Charlie Lindgren was sharp in the Washington crease, keeping the Wings at bay. Following a scoreless first period, Detroit got on the board early in the second when ex-Caps winger Daniel Sprong found himself with the puck and plenty of time and space down low in the Washington end. He waited out Lindgren and patiently lifted a shot over him for a 1-0 Wings lead at 3:35 of the middle frame.
Just over four minutes later, Washington drew even on a bit of a role reversal from its two biggest stars. From the left half wall, Ovechkin made a sublime feed through a defender’s skates to Backstrom, who was stationed in the slot. Backstrom simultaneously fought off a Simon Edvinsson check and took a forehand whack at the puck, putting it past Detroit netminder Alex Lyon to make it a 1-1 game at 7:38.
Coming out of a television timeout in the back half of the second period, the Caps took the lead. Evgeny Kuznetsov won a right dot draw directly to Tom Wilson in the pocket, and Wilson ripped a shot that went into the protective netting behind the Detroit net. Only two seconds came off the clock, and the two sides set up for another right dot draw. Again, Kuznetsov pulled it back to Wilson, and this time the big right wing fired it past Lyon’s glove on the short side. Only two seconds elapsed again, and Washington owned a 2-1 lead at 12:26 of the second.
“The first one, it was rolling a little bit,” recounts Wilson. “I took a second to try to settle it a little bit and then shoot it; it was too late. And then the second one, I was able to one-time it.”
Miroshnichenko collected the secondary assist on the Wilson goal, and he added another helper on Washington’s final goal of the game.
Early in the third, Nic Dowd drew a penalty to put the Caps on the power play. Late in that man advantage, a Sandin shot from the right point found its way through traffic in front and past goaltender Sebastian Cossa, who came on in relief of Lyon at the start of the third. Sandin’s power-play goal made it 3-1 at 7:10 of the third.
Nine minutes later, the Caps scored their fourth straight goal, pushing their lead to 4-1 when Mike Sgarbossa and Miroshnichenko combined to set up the veteran defenseman for a tap-in from the slot at 16:11.
But the Wings weren’t done. Immediately after Detroit won the center ice draw following Carlson’s goal, Cossa raced to the bench for an extra attacker. Less than a minute after the Carlson goal, Detroit made it a 4-2 game when Sprong made a seam feed to Robby Fabbri on the right dot, and the latter scored with 3:04 left.
With 1:13 remaining, Fabbri struck again from the same spot to make it 4-3. Washington narrowly missed a couple of good looks at the vacated Wings net, and it like those misses might come back to haunt them when Fabbri blazed down the middle of the ice and made a bid for a natural hat trick in about three minutes time. But Lindgren casually snared the shot with 5.8 seconds remaining on the clock, sealing the victory.
“It was good,” says Carbery of the win. “Our five-on-six didn’t make it as comfortable as probably we would have liked. It was good, even for our whole group – the coaching staff – just the morale. I understand it’s preseason and these games don’t mean a lot when the puck drops for real, but it just reinforces that you’re doing some things right. That’s always stuff you want to build off as a team, whether it’s the coaching staff or the players. Anytime you win – whether it’s preseason or not – it’s a positive thing for your group.”
