In Game 3 of the ten games that mattered for the Washington
Capitals this season they kicked off a new rivalry with an old opponent. In doing so, some familiar early season
trends were being further established for both clubs.
November 15, 2013: Washington (9-8-1) at Detroit (9-5-5)
Result: Capitals 4 – Red Wings 3 (OT/SO)
The Background: Until
the realignment for the 2013-2014 season that put the Washington Capitals and
the Detroit Red Wings in the same conference, the two clubs had not occupied
the same conference since the Red Wings and Caps were part of the Norris
Division of the Prince of Wales Conference in 1978-1979. How long ago was that? Only four members of
the Red Wings who dressed for this game had been born when that took place and none
of the current Capitals. In the
intervening 33 seasons the teams met just 69 times, the Caps holding a slight
30-28-9-2 edge (oh yeah, there was that Stanley Cup finals thing, too).
Moving to the present, the Caps went into this game on a
5-1-1 run to start November, although three of those five wins came in extra
time. The Red Wings went into the
contest having lost four in a row, the last three of them in extra time. They also found themselves curiously unable
to win games at home with any regularity, sporting a record of 3-2-5 (0-1-5 in
their last six home games) as they took to the ice at Joe Louis Arena.
Why it Mattered: When
visiting an opponent that struggles on their own rink, it is good to score
first and disabuse them of any notion that this game will right the wrongs and
end the agony. It took a while, but the
Caps did just that, taking advantage of some dodgy Red Wings efforts. The play started when defenseman Danny
DeKeyser tried to hit Justin Abdelkader at along the wall at the Caps’ blue
line. Steve Oleksy blocked the attempt,
then threaded the puck past DeKeyser to Brooks Laich at the Detroit blue
line. Laich sped down the right side
with the Wings’ Johan Franzen and Kyle Quincey in pursuit to try to cut Laich
off from the net. Both Red Wings tried to
poke the puck off Laich’s stick, but Laich managed to get a shot on goalie
Jimmy Howard that might or might not have been deflected by either Franzen or
Quincey’s stick. The puck hit Howard in
the winged wheel logo of his jersey but popped up into the air before he could
pin it to his chest with his glove.
Neither Franzen nor Quincey bothered to take Laich out of the play after
the original shot, and Laich took advantage of that lapse to take a second
swipe at the puck as it dropped to the ice.
The second time was the charm as Laich backhanded the puck past Howard’s
left pad and in to give the Caps a 1-0 lead.
The Caps could not hold that lead as far as the first
intermission. Detroit came back with
goals 2:18 apart late in the second period, the first on a power play on a low
angle shot by Franzen from the left wing circle that beat goalie Braden Holtby
over his right shoulder and off the near post.
Franzen got the second one, too, when from the right wing corner he fed
the puck to Tomas Tatar behind the Caps net, then circled out and all the way
around to the goal line extended to Holtby’s right. He took a return feed from Tatar in stride
and snapped a shot that Holtby got a piece of with his right pad. It was not enough, though, merely deflecting
the puck up and into the back of the net to give Detroit a 2-1 lead at the
first intermission.
The second period was relatively quiet until Tom Wilson took
a holding penalty with 2:06 left. On the
ensuing power play DeKeyser atoned for his mistakes on the Laich goal by
one-timing a cross-ice feed from Franzen past Holtby to give the Red Wings a
3-1 lead with just 12 seconds left on the power play and 18 seconds left in the
period.
The Red Wings might have solved their home ice problems
except for the minor detail of there being 20 more minutes left to play. The Caps scored early in the third when the
Caps got the puck in deep where Marcus Johansson found Alex Ovechkin at the
bottom of the left wing circle. Ovechkin
one timed the puck through defenseman Nicklas Kronwall’s legs, over Howard’s
blocker and off the crossbar to cut the lead to one goal.
The Caps made it all the way back mid-way through the period
on a play started when the Caps applied offensive zone pressure, getting the
Red Wings to chase the puck as the Caps worked it around to John Carlson at the
right point. Carlson fired a shot that
reached the net as Jason Chimera was crossing Howard’s line of sight. The distraction kept Howard from fielding the
puck cleanly, the puck squirting to Howard’s right. Michael Latta jumped between Quincey and
Pavel Datsyuk to backhand the loose puck into the Detroit net for his first NHL
goal that tied the game at 3-3.
That would do it for the scoring in the hockey portion of
the evening. That left it to the trick
shot phase, and it was true to its nickname.
After the teams exchanged unsuccessful attempts in the first two round,
Detroit’s Todd Bertuzzi stepped out to open round three. Bertuzzi picked up the puck at the center
dot, looped to his right and skated through the right wing faceoff circle. Then, as he cut into the low slot he tried to
effect a spin-a-rama move to freeze Holtby.
It had a certain “dancing bear” aspect to it that was enchanting. It was also unsuccessful. Holtby poked checked the puck off Bertuzzi’s
stick, leaving it up to Nicklas Backstrom in the bottom half of the third
round. Backstrom displayed a more subtle
form of trickery. Skating in from center
Backstrom bent right, then moved down the middle where he opened the blade of
his stick to suggest he might go over Howard’s blocker. Howard bit on the move, opening his five
hole. Backstrom wasted no time
capitalizing on the opening, firing the puck through Howard’s legs to give the
Caps a 4-3 win.
The Takeaway: For the
Caps it was just the ninth visit to Detroit since the teams met in the Stanley
Cup finals in 1998. The win made the
Caps 4-3-2 in those nine meetings in Detroit.
More important, the win and the extra standings point drew the Caps to
within a point of the Red Wings in the conference standings. It also was the first time the Caps came back
from a two or more goal deficit to win a game since they defeated Calgary, 5-4,
after falling behind by three goals twice in the Caps’ home opener. This contest would be an interesting debut of
the season series. All three of the
meetings of these teams in 2013-2014 would go to extra time, the Caps winning
twice.
For Michael Latta, that first NHL goal would be his only NHL
goal of the season; he would play only seven more games for Washington before
being sent down to Hershey permanently on January 11th. At the other end of the forward lines, the
goal by Ovechkin and assists by Johansson and Backstrom on the play gave each
of the members of the top line 15 or more points (Ovechkin and Johansson with
15, Backstrom with 16). For Backstrom it
was the fourth of what would be seven trick shot goals in the 2013-2014 season
and his second of what would be four game-deciding goals.
In the end…
It was a hard earned win, but it was part of a deceptive
stretch of games for the Caps. The win
made the Caps 6-1-1 in November, but four of the wins came in extra time, three
of them by the Gimmick. The wins were
welcome, but it was part illusion, too.
The Caps were depending too much on fate and circumstance, going 6-1 in
all extra time games (5-1 in the Gimmick) with this win. They would go just 8-13 in extra time games
over the rest of the season (5-10 in the freestyle competition). One could see that the Caps had the capacity
to come back from deficits. But one
could also see in this game that they were playing with fire and very well
might be burned as the season wore on, which is why this game mattered.
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