It’s still October, but Tuesday night’s tilt between the Capitals and the New York Rangers at Capital One Arena had the feel of a game with much more on the line than just two early season points. The Caps came away with both of those standings points, extending their home winning streak to four with a thriller of a 5-3 win over the Blueshirts.
Alex Ovechkin scored twice, Caps’ youngsters Aliaksei Protas and Connor McMichael both scored and turned in dominant performances, and the Washington defense stood firm despite losing top pairing defender Jakob Chychrun to an upper body injury early in the game. Logan Thompson only needed to make 16 saves to earn his fourth win in as many starts in goal for the Capitals, but he again came up big in the clutch when it mattered.
“What a hockey game,” exudes Caps’ coach Spencer Carbery. “That had everything. I’m glad that was on national television, because that helps our sport a lot. That was a great hockey game. I thought our guys played outstanding, start to finish.”
If you were tardy in arriving at Capital One Arena for Tuesday’s Metro Division matchup or in turning on the television, you may have missed some of the early action. Three goals were scored and a heavyweight bout took place, all before the game’s first television timeout.
The fight – between Washington’s Dylan McIlrath and New York’s Matt Rempe – was the first event; the two dropped mitts at 2:37 with McIlrath taking the New York winger down after the two exchanged blows for a minute or so.
The scoring started less than a minute later when Washington grabbed a 1-0 lead on the forecheck. Dylan Strome and Protas got into the left wing corner of New York ice and jimmied a puck loose. Ovechkin kept it in at the point, worked a quick give and go with Strome down low, then beat New York netminder Igor Shesterkin with a wrist shot from the inside of the left circle for a 1-0 lead at 3:23.
Just under a minute later, New York pulled even on its first shot on net of the night. Eight seconds after the Rangers lost a draw at their own line, they squared the score at 1-1 when Will Cuylle finished a Kaapo Kakko feed on a short ice 2-on-1 at 4:21 of the first.
The Caps and Ovechkin got that one back, also in less than a minute. After losing an offensive zone draw, Strome picked off a K’Andre Miller feed and quickly set up a 2-on-1 below the circles for Protas and Ovechkin. The former fed the latter with a patient backhand sauce feed, and the captain buried it for his second of the night at 5:10, seven seconds after the face-off.
Ovechkin’s two-goal game was the 174th multi-goal outing of his career; he is now 38 goals shy of passing Wayne Gretzky (894) for the top spot on the NHL’s all-time goal scoring ledger.
Just under four minutes later, the Caps expanded their lead to two. Taylor Raddysh made a nifty move to shake a defender, getting closer to the slot for a better look, and from there he put the puck toward the net, where McMichael deflected it to the shelf to make it 3-1 at 8:58.
Most of the remainder of the first was comparatively quiet, but Strome was whistled for a hooking minor at the 20-minute mark, enabling the Rangers to open the second with a full two-minute man advantage. Once again, the early portion of the period was comprised of high-event hockey.
Half a minute into the second, the Rangers cut into the Washington lead on the power play. Mika Zibanejad put the puck toward the right post, and it clanked in off the skate blade of New York winger Chris Kreider to make it a 3-2 game.
With the two teams playing 4-on-4 hockey exactly four minutes later, Protas beat Miller to a puck on the forecheck, dug the puck out of the right wing corner, fed Rasmus Sandin at the opposite point, then made a beeline to beat Miller to the net. Sandin understood the assignment; he hit Protas in front and the big rig tipped it home to make it 4-2.
Alas, New York responded with a similar pretty passing play during the same 4-on-4 sequence just 14 seconds later, Filip Chytil converting a Victor Mancini feed with a redirect to make it a 4-3 game.
Less than a minute after the Chytil goal, Shesterkin stopped a McMichael breakaway. From that point forward, the Rangers’ goaltender looked like the perennial Vezina Trophy candidate he is.
Protas had an epic shorthanded shift of 84 seconds in length later in the second. He spent a good chunk of that time defending without his stick in the defensive zone, but suddenly found himself with some running room – conveniently, near the Caps’ bench, where the sticks are kept – and as he breezed past, a new weapon was placed in his hands. Alas, it wasn’t Protas’ own stick, but he still managed to squeeze off two shots; Shesterkin stopped the first and the second one missed.
With a goal and two assists, Protas authored the third three-point game of his career, matching his career best.
“It’s been a fun game, a big test for our team,” he says. “It’s actually fun games to play where you have to step up and show your best, and I think that’s what our team did today, overall.”
The Capitals survived a brief 5-on-3 New York power play in the second, and they entered the third still holding that 4-3 advantage.
New York pressed hard in the third, but the Caps didn’t sit back. Washington forced Shesterkin to make a number of big saves late to keep the game close, and Thompson did the same at the opposite end. The Caps’ netminder’s best stop was a lateral denial on Chytil with less than nine minutes remaining in the third.
Without Chychrun for most of the night, Washington’s blueline was overworked, but it got the job done. By night’s end, Sandin, John Carlson, Martin Fehervary and Trevor van Riemsdyk were all at or above the 23-minute mark.
“Obviously, it’s unfortunate to lose Chych there,” laments van Riemsdyk. “And we go down to five [defensemen] pretty early. But that happens, and that’s why we pride ourselves on the depth of this team and the back end. [McIlrath] stepped right in and played some really important minutes and some tough matchups, and he did a great job, not only the fight to get everyone riled up, but after that was over to settle into the game and play a really steady and responsible game.”
The Caps also used their offense to keep New York out of their end of the ice. McMichael finished with a career high 10 shots on net, and the Caps teed up 84 shot attempts on the night, getting 46 of them on Shesterkin.
“Last game [a 3-0 loss to the Lightning on Saturday in Tampa],” begins McMichael, “I thought we had a lot of good looks, just not a lot of traffic in front of [Tampa goalie Andrej] Vasilevskiy. And I thought tonight was a little bit of the opposite. We were all around the net, making it as tough as possible on Shesterkin. He made a lot of good saves, but we tried making as hard as possible, and I thought we did a really good job of that.”
Washington’s short-staffed defense managed to avoid any back-breaking defensive zone shifts, and when Nic Dowd was able to loft a long-distance shot into a vacant cage in the final minute, the Caps had another victory over another elite team, and they had vanquished the team that eliminated them from the playoffs six months earlier.
“Their first [period] had much more pop in it than ours did,” says Rangers’ coach Peter Laviolette. “Everywhere – from face-offs, face-off battles, defensive zone coverage to their offensive zone play. We were chasing the game.”
Thompson made sure the Rangers weren’t successful in that endeavor. In four starts this season, Thompson has yielded just one goal that put the Caps behind on the scoreboard, and that was an Erik Haula goal early in the first period of an Oct. 19 game in New Jersey.
“[Thompson] I thought made a couple of really good saves late, which he’s done a good job of,” says Carbery of his goaltender. “Say what you want about the first part of the game and some of the goals and whatnot, and not a lot of [shot] volume. But when the game has been on the line, he’s made a few really big saves in the games that he has played to preserve a win, and get us two points.”
