Connor McMichael scooped up a loose puck at the Washington line and turned on the jets, flying into Seattle ice with the game on his stick in the back half of the third period on Thursday night at Climate Pledge Arena. He seemed to know exactly what he was going to do with the puck once he confronted Kraken goaltender Joey Daccord, and he executed perfectly, faking a shot and then lifting a backhander over the prone netminder to snap a 1-1 tie in a tightly played contest on both sides.
McMichael’s goal with 8:24 left in the third – his second in as many games – lifted Washington to a 2-1 victory over the Kraken, giving them their first victory in three tries at Seattle’s resplendent arena.
Last June, McMichael’s Hershey Bears prevailed over Daccord’s Coachella Valley Firebirds in a taut seven-game series, and McMichael scored on Daccord in both Games 6 and 7 of that series. As he cruised in on the Seattle goaltender, he had a pretty good idea of what to do.
“I’m pretty familiar with him, obviously, from last year,” says McMichael. “I know he plays pretty aggressive to the shooter, and he likes to challenge, so I just wanted to throw a little fake shot in, and beat him to that post.”
Playing for the second time in as many nights, coming off a 7-2 thumping at the hands of the Oilers in Edmonton in a late-starting Wednesday game, and getting into their Seattle hotel in the wee hours of Thursday morning, the Caps showed no signs of weariness in the middle match of their five-game tour of the western part of the continent.
The road-drained Caps managed to control play for most of the night, a welcome departure from the lopsided losses they absorbed in the first two games of the trip.
“I agree,” says Caps’ coach Spencer Carbery. “The second period especially, you could feel there were a couple of sequences where our reloads and our puck pressure, where they were trying to, ‘Okay, let’s see if we can hold onto this puck and see if we can change,’ and we wouldn’t let them. We were just constantly on the puck, and I didn’t feel like we had an energy lapse.”
Seattle’s bench boss saw it similarly.
“The first two periods – mainly the second period – we didn’t generate anything offensively,” says Kraken coach Dave Hakstol. “We didn’t come up with enough pucks in the offensive zone. So we were one and done, and didn’t have any opportunities in there.”
Washington was able to navigate some early peril thanks to an excellent save by goaltender Charlie Lindgren on Kraken defenseman Jamie Oleksiak very early in the first, and they killed off an early minor penalty, with Lindgren making three more stops.
The two sides played to a scoreless first with few high danger opportunities for either side, and not much time or space to be had at either end of the ice. With some diligent work in the offensive zone, the Caps earned a trio of power plays in the middle period. The first one was short-lived; T.J. Oshie was whistled for hooking just three seconds into the advantage. The second produced only one Alex Ovechkin shot. On the third one, the Caps caught a big break that allowed them to play with a lead for the first time on the trip.
Washington dumped the puck into the Seattle end, and Daccord went just out of his crease – on his left – to handle the puck and make an outlet feed to a teammate. Daccord is typically adept with his touches and handles, but this attempt caught an onrushing Oshie’s leg, and the puck bounded inexorably into the net for a 1-0 Washington lead at 14:20.
“Those are the ones you dream about,” says Oshie. “I don’t feel like the puck has really been finding me the first couple of games back [from injury], so it was nice that [Daccord] was able to find my leg there, and then put it in the back of the net for me.”
Visibly buoyed by their first lead of the road trip, he Caps were uplifted for a few minutes, and any weariness from playing for the second time in as many nights subsided. They forechecked ferociously, and though they didn’t produce any more offense, they out-attempted the Kraken by a 10-5 count over the remainder of the middle period. The Caps created a number of good looks during that stretch, but only three shots on net. Some of their best opportunities were among the five shots that missed the mark.
Early in the third, Lindgren made another strong save on a Seattle power play, but the Kraken was able to pull even seconds later when Oliver Bjorkstand struck from the slot, tying the game at 3:32 of the third.
The Kraken caught some life from that tying tally, and they were buzzing a bit in the offensive zone afterwards. But Lindgren had the answers for everything sent his way, and when ex-Cap Andre Burakovsky – playing in his 600th NHL game – got a bit careless with a drop pass at the line, McMichael knew exactly what to do with it.
“It feels really good; it’s nice getting a plus out there for a change, especially when you have nothing to do with it,” quips Oshie of the McMichael game-winner. “But that’s an important goal for us. Young guy stepped up at a big moment for us to get an absolutely massive two points.”
Saddled with consecutive regulation losses for the first time in over a month, it was two points the Caps knew they had to have, and they found a way to get it done.
“You could feel it today in the meetings and the meal room pregame, that guys knew what was at stake tonight, with our backs against the wall, as we’re running out of runway,” says Carbery. “And we knew we needed to have a massive effort from our entire group, and that’s what they delivered.”
