Wild Downs Caps, 5-3

Matt Boldy's hat trick propelled the Minnesota Wild to a 5-3 victory over the Capitals at Xcel Energy Center on Sunday afternoon in St. Paul. Boldy's first two goals came in the first five minutes of the contest, staking the Wild to an early lead it never relinquished.

Caps' captain Alex Ovechkin struck for a pair of power-play goals in Sunday's game, pulling to within two power-play goals of 300 for his NHL career, and moving to within one goal of what would be the 13th season of his career with 40 or more goals. Currently, he shares the record for most 40-goal seasons with Wayne Gretzky (12).
For the fourth time in as many games, the Caps found themselves down by at least a goal ahead of the game's first television timeout in Sunday's game. Boldy scored on his first shift of the game, scoring on the rebound of a Marcus Johansson shot at the 50-second mark of the first period.
"It's frustrating, obviously," says Caps' center Dylan Strome. "We just haven't started good. I think the last 40 minutes of the last five or six games we've played have been pretty good. We've hung in there with everyone we've played against. Obviously, just our starts aren't great. I'm not sure of the exact reason. But we've got to have a better start next game; time is quickly running out."
On his second shift of the game, Boldy scored in transition after an Ovechkin turnover, taking a feed from Johansson and scoring on a one-timer from the right circle to make it 2-0 for the Wild, which has suffered just one regulation loss in its last 16 games (12-1-3).
"You can see it was a bad play by me on the second goal, obviously," says Ovechkin. "And it was an unlucky bounce off [T.J. Oshie's] stick, so that's the situation right now."
Washington straightened out thereafter, but once again the hole proved to be too deep. The Caps' power play unit wasn't able to score on a pair of opportunities in the first period, but it generated seven of the team's dozen shots on net in the opening period and was effective throughout the afternoon.
Ovechkin's first goal of the game came on a tee-up from Rasmus Sandin at 5:34 of the middle frame, cutting the Minnesota lead in half on a shot from just above the left circle.
Less than six minutes after that goal, the Wild restored its two-goal cushion when Ryan Reaves deflected a Ryan Hartman shot past Caps' goalie Charlie Lindgren from the top of the paint at 10:14.
Washington's penalty kill snuffed out two Minnesota man advantages in short succession, including a 37-second stretch of two-man advantage time shortly after the Reaves goal.
Early in the third, Minnesota's Matt Dumba delivered a high, hard hit to Caps' center Evgeny Kuznetsov, who left the game at that point and did not return. Oshie unsurprisingly stood up for his teammate and fought Dumba, incurring a 10-minute misconduct and a minor for instigating.
Although the Caps killed off the ensuing Wild power play, Wild winger Brandon Duhaime scored on a backhander from the right circle just 14 seconds after the Caps executed the kill, putting Washington in a three-goal hole at 3:46.
Three seconds into a Washington power play in the back half of the third, Ovechkin scored his second of the game with a wrist shot from above the left circle following a Strome draw win on the left dot. The goal pulled the Caps within two again with 7:27 remaining, but Boldy scooped up a loose puck at the Minnesota line and scored on a breakaway less than a minute and a half after Ovechkin's second goal, putting the Caps down by three once again.
With Lindgren pulled for an extra attacker, Strome scored on a rebound at the doorstep with 3:34 left. Washington kept the heat on late, but again, the early hole was too much to overcome against one of the best in the Western Conference, and one of the League's hottest teams.
Ovechkin assisted on the Strome goal to pick up his third point of the game. He has now recorded a point in each of the 12 career games he has played at Xcel Energy Center, scoring at least one goal in eight of those dozen contests.
"It's a great atmosphere," says Ovechkin. "It's sold out. It's a great place to play hockey."
Xcel is the closest NHL barn to Lakeville, Minn. where Lindgren grew up, and Sunday marked his first career NHL start in the building.
"It was really cool," says Lindgren. "Before the game, I really tried to soak it in. I came to a lot of games growing up. It felt awesome playing here, but I'm pretty upset with the way it ended."
Down to 11 games remaining in the regular season, there is no quit in the Caps, but they need to give themselves a chance with a better start. It's hard enough to win consistently in the NHL when you're not constantly playing from behind.
Dating back to the Stadium Series game in Raleigh on Feb. 18 - a span of 14 games and 851:09 of hockey for the Caps - Washington has played with the lead for a grand total of just 138 minutes and 46 seconds, or 16.3 percent of the time. That's the lowest amount of lead time for any of the NHL's 32 teams over that span, and the Caps are 5-8-1 over that span.
"We don't give up, we try to battle, and battle back," says Ovechkin. "We tried to win the hockey game, and we don't stop playing. We battled."