Adam Fantilli scored at 16:17 of the third period to snap a 2-2 tie, and the 18-year-old rookie’s goal stood up as the game-winner as Columbus closed out the preseason with a 4-2 victory over the Capitals at Capital One Arena on Saturday night. Metropolitan Division rivals Washington and Columbus concluded the preseason with a home-and-home set of games, and the two clubs traded 4-2 victories in the opposition’s building.
Washington finished the preseason at 3-2-1, while Columbus ended up at 4-3-1.
Fantilli’s goal came off the rush, and the Caps have yielded a few more rush goals than they would have liked during the preseason. Washington has also dodged some bullets on the rush in this preseason, and Caps’ coach Spencer Carbery wants to see those odd-man rushes curbed as his club prepares for its regular season opener here on Oct. 13 against Pittsburgh.
“We have to get that cleaned up,” asserts Carbery. “It is not a recipe for success in the National Hockey League if you continue to give up odd-man rushes.
“We have to get that cleaned up from a read and a puck play standpoint, and a structure standpoint. So that’s what we’ll go to work on.”
The Caps started well, holding Columbus without a shot on net for more than six minutes at game’s outset, and keeping the Jackets without a shot for nearly 13 minutes from midway through the first period to early in the second.
Following a scoreless opening period, Columbus got on the board first, scoring a rush goal on a pretty tic-tac-toe passing play that originated with left winger Alexandre Texier and finished with a Boone Jenner goal at 4:57 of the second. Emil Bemstrom picked up the primary helper on the play.
Washington pulled even less than two minutes later when Nic Dowd set up a John Carlson one-timer at 6:18. Dowd had the puck in the slot, and rather than shooting, he opted for a feed to Carlson, who was on the very outside of the left circle when he cranked a shot past Columbus netminder Elvis Merzlikins.
Just after the midpoint of the contest, the Caps jumped in front, but only after a video review overturned an erroneous “no goal” call on the ice. From the right point, Caps defenseman Lucas Johansen spotted captain Alex Ovechkin lurking near the top of the paint. Johansen put the puck on Ovechkin’s tape, and the captain chipped it over Merzlikins. Jackets defenseman Zach Werenski made a valiant effort to keep it out, but video review showed that he did not do so, giving Washington a 2-1 lead at 10:36.
Two of Darcy Kuemper’s best saves of the night came in the second, and both came after the Caps had turned the puck over in their own zone. Kuemper denied Jenner early in the second and thwarted Kirill Marchenko just ahead of the midpoint of the middle period.
Columbus was held without a shot for more than seven and a half minutes in the back half of the second, the third time in two periods the Jackets went more than six minutes without a shot on goal.
Late in the second, Caps winger T.J. Oshie rocked Fantilli with a hard check, a hit that led to a few minutes of chippy play between the two teams.
Six and a half minutes into the third, Columbus forward Cole Sillinger tied the game five seconds after a face-off win in the Washington end of the ice, making it a 2-2 game.
Washington squandered a 5-on-3 power play of 65 seconds in duration midway through the third, a golden opportunity with which it might have regained the lead.
The third player chosen in the 2023 NHL Draft and last season’s Hobey Baker Award winner following a stellar freshman season at U. of Michigan, Fantilli put the Jackets back on top when he took a feed from Marchenko and showed a quick release in beating Kuemper.
“He came back and he wasn’t injured,” says Jackets’ coach Pascal Vincent of Fantilli. “That goal was a quick release, at the ice level anyway, I don’t know about from upstairs. At the ice level, it was a real skilled shot from a good player.
The Caps nearly tied the game again less than a minute after the Fantilli goal, but Merzlikins made his best save of the night to deny Connor McMichael from in tight with just over three minutes remaining.
“[Evgeny Kuznetsov] made a nice play intercepting that D-to-D pass, and I was calling for the puck,” recounts McMichael. “I was just a little too in tight to get it up, so I just threw it on net and he made a great save.
With just under a minute remaining, Jackets’ center Patrik Laine scored into a vacated Washington net to account for the 4-2 final.
Regarding the tussle for roster spots and the last few roster moves Washington will make in the next two days, Carbery was lukewarm.
“I thought it was just okay,” he said, asked specifically about the defense. “I thought there were some good sequences, and then I thought we struggled at times. Second period, bunch of reads, and then odd man rushes and then obviously it gets away from us a little bit.
“The third wasn’t terrible; it was just a couple of sequences that ended up in the back of our net. We lose gap on the one, which is [defense] related. I know I’ve said this a few times, but there were some good [things], but also some situations that we struggled with.”
