Two days after celebrating his 31st birthday, and on a night when he was well south of the weather, Charlie Lindgren turned in a top-notch performance in net to stem the Caps’ brief slide at two games. Lindgren stopped 24 of the 25 shots he faced to help the Caps to a 3-1 victory over the visiting Carolina Hurricanes on Friday night at Capital One Arena.
Friday’s game is the Caps’ lone Metro Division matchup in a span of 10 games, and they appeared to have it circled on their calendar. Returning home from a fruitless two-game road trip early in the week, the Caps started strong and stayed strong, holding their own against the oppressive Carolina forecheck and laying out to block more shots (27) than the Canes managed to put on Lindgren.
Offensively, the Caps scored the game’s first goal in the final minute of the first frame, and when they tallied again in the final minute of the middle period, they were able to carry a 3-0 cushion into the third.
“I liked all of our game,” says Caps coach Spencer Carbery. “Right from the start, the power play was what I was really impressed with. We get that early power play, and I liked our first few shifts.
“You could tell it was a big game; the crowd was into it, two really good teams. You could feel that from the puck drop, and then we get that early power play and I felt like that dragged our team [into the game]. It was, ‘Okay, we’re ready to play tonight, and it’s going to be a highly competitive game, and we’ve got our fastball tonight.’”
The Caps went on the power play before the game was three minutes old because the Canes were guilty of too many men on the ice. The Caps didn’t score on that man advantage, but they had zone time, they snapped the puck around crisply, and they made Canes goaltender Pyotr Kochetkov move and work. Kochetkov made an excellent stop on Dylan Strome, the first of four shots Washington put on the Carolina net during that man advantage.
Washington also weathered a couple of minutes of 4-on-4 hockey without incident, and it broke the stalemate late in the first. Matt Roy pinched down the wall and moved the puck back to the right point, where Andrew Mangiapane was filling in for him. Mangiapane put a waist high shot toward the net, and Aliaksei Protas deftly deflected it to the shelf for a 1-0 Washington lead with 42.3 seconds left in the opening stanza.
Protas’ goal came with some of his family members in the building, and he was more animated than usual when the red light came on.
“It’s pretty special; I think they’re happy for me for sure,” he says. “That’s a great play all around; it started a couple of shifts before. The power play got momentum, and I think we did a great job of staying with it and found a way to score.”
The Caps needed to kill off a couple of Carolina power plays early in the second, and Lindgren preserved Washington’s slim lead with a timely back door stop on Andrei Svechnikov mere seconds into the second of those man advantages.
Lindgren’s stop on Svechnikov was merely the warm-up act for the main event. Just over three minutes later, he made a windmill glove save on Tyson Jost, a stop that will outlive all of us in the land of highlight reels.
Carolina quickly moved the puck from its own end to the Washington line, creating a short ice 3-on-1 while Washington was executing a personnel change. Jackson Blake entered the zone on the right side and went cross ice to Jost, who quickly sent it on net from the left dot as Lindgren slid to his right, stacking his pads and thrusting his glove up high as he did. His timing was perfect; he robbed Jost, catching the puck in his glove as the awestruck crowd rose to show their appreciation.
“It obviously sucks,” says Jost. “I mean, he made a great save. I did everything I could, too; I put it right where I wanted, and he made a circus save. Tip your hat to him, I guess.”
“Huge save – the crowd, the building,” says Carbery. “I’ve seen a save like that live before, from behind the bench. But usually, it’s off the pad. The glove was the impressive part of that one, that he makes the glove save on that one.”
“I did something like that, when I played NHL on the Xbox,” quips Protas. “But yeah, not in the real life.”
Later in the period, the Caps blunted a Carolina offensive zone shift and Hendrix Lapierre skated it out of harm’s way with speed. He sent Jakub Vrana into Carolina ice down the left side, and Vrana’s shot from the left dot eluded Kochetkov to double the Washington lead to 2-0 at 16:11.
“Overall, we as a line didn’t get many scoring chances tonight,” says Vrana. “But I’m happy we capitalized on that one.”
Vrana’s goal was his fifth of the season and his first since Nov. 17. He has points in consecutive games, and his Friday night goal stands up as the game-winner.
The Caps struck again in the final minute of the second, going up by three when Connor McMichael ripped a shot past Kochetkov from the slot.
Carolina’s Seth Jarvis spoiled Lindgren’s shutout bid with a goal in transition at 10:22 of the third, but Lindgren and the Caps defense shut the door the rest of the way.
Lindgren, who is almost always available to talk postgame – win or lose – did not speak with media after the game because of his illness. Friday’s victory is Lindgren’s 10th of the season, and it pushes his lifetime mark in the month of December to 19-5-3. Nineteen of his 63 career wins have been recorded in the final month of the year.
“I did not like the first period; we were not very good in the first,” laments Canes coach Rod Brind’Amour. “And we give up a late goal, which you don’t want to do, obviously.
“Second period, the first 15 minutes we were doing exactly what we needed [to do], and [Lindgren] made a couple of nice saves, and then we give up another one kind of late, which deflates the whole group. You’re not getting three against these guys – probably – with the way they defend.”
