The game held to form in one important respect in that the
team that dominated the possession numbers skated off with a win. The Islanders did just that from the drop of
the puck, dominating in shots in the first period, 16-5 overall, and in shot
attempts, 29-13. If not for the effort
of Caps goalie Braden Holtby, who returned to action after missing Game 2 to
illness, the game might have been over early.
Holtby stopped all 16 shots he faced to allow the Caps to escape to the
first intermission in a scoreless tie.
It would be the Islanders breaking on top, though, when
Lubomir Visnovsky wired a shot from the top of the right wing faceoff circle
that Kyle Okposo redirected past Holtby to make it 1-0 12:37 into
the second period.
The Caps were unable to solve Islander goalie Jaroslav Halak
in the first 40 minutes, but they broke through late in the third period. Nicklas Backstrom started the scoring
sequence from behind the Islander net.
He chipped a pass to Mike Green backing through the right wing circle,
Green returning the puck to Backstrom circling out and around the faceoff
circle in Green’s wake. Backstrom curled
out to the high slot where he fired a shot that snaked its way through a maze
of bodies screening Halak and into the back of the net to tie the game with
6:06 left in regulation.
That did it for the scoring in the 60 minutes of
regulation. But on a day that was the 28th
anniversary of the end of the four-overtime “Easter Epic” between these teams,
extra time would end in a blink. Johnny
Boychuk fired a shot into the Caps’ end that was gloved down by Holtby, who
swept the puck off to John Carlson in the corner to his right. Carlson received the puck and in one motion
sent it up the right wing boards, but not out.
Nick Leddy kept the puck in at the blue line and fired it toward the
cage from the point. Nikolai Kulemin tried
to redirect the puck past Holtby, but Holtby managed to steer the puck off to
his right. As luck – Caps luck – would have
it, the puck ended up on the tape of John Tavares who snapped it back behind Holtby’s
back and into the far side of the net to give the Islanders a 2-1 win on the
scoreboard and a 2-1 lead in games.
Other stuff…
-- The end in overtime is always like a thunderclap, but in
this instance it was a lot of little things that went wrong for the Caps and
right for the Islanders in those 15 seconds of overtime. There was John Tavares beating Nicklas Backstrom
on the draw to open the overtime (Backstrom was 5-for-13 against Tavares on
draws for the game). There was John
Carlson’s no-look sweep of the puck up the boards into traffic. There was Joel Ward along the wall, unable to
deflect the puck up and out of the zone past Nick Leddy. There was Brooks Orpik getting a stick on the
rebound of Kulemin’s redirect that Holtby kicked out, forcing Holtby to kick
his right pad out once more and sending the puck down the goal line to his
right. There was Carlson neither getting
a body on Tavares nor tying up his stick before Tavares got his shot off. There was Holtby, leaving just enough room
off the near post after having to defend the puck twice in bang-bang fashion
for Tavares’ shot to sneak through. It
was a sequence that you couldn’t duplicate, but one that could loom large in
this series.
-- The Islanders held a 64-45 advantage in shot attempts at
5-on-5, a 31-22 advantage in scoring chances (numbers from
war-on-ice.com).
-- Alex Ovechkin finished with 14 of the Caps’ 57 shot
attempts overall. He was held, however,
to just three shots on goal. He has one
goal on 15 shots and 36 shot attempt in three games. 13 of those shot attempts were blocked, nine
of them in this game alone.
-- This was the first time this season that Braden Holtby faced
more than 40 shots in a game (he saw 40 shots in a 3-2 win over Chicago on
November 7th).
-- Every Islander skater recorded at least one shot on
goal. Every Capital skater recorded at
least one hit.
-- Eric Fehr skated two shifts and just 1:19 before going
out with an upper-body injury. It
appeared to be a re-injury of his shoulder, a problem for Fehr over the late
stages of the regular season. Marcus
Johansson went out late in the first period when he appeared to have taken a
skate blade to his calf, but he returned for the second period and finished the
game.
-- Secondary scoring
means secondary effort. Troy Brouwer:
one shot attempt (one shot); Evgeny Kuznetsov: two shot attempts (one shot);
Jason Chimera: no shot attempts; Jay Beagle: no shot attempts.
-- On the other hand, 16 of the Caps’ 57 shot attempts came
from the defense, nine of them on goal.
Brooks Orpik was the only defenseman not to register a shot on goal.
-- A statistic you do not want to see associated with
Nicklas Backstrom. The Islanders have
nine goals in this series; Backstrom was on ice for six of them, including the
game-winner in this game (but as an observer, not a culprit, except for losing that draw to
open overtime).
-- The Caps returned to that whole “one goal” thing against
Jaroslav Halak. He has held the Caps to
a single goal in five of his last six games against Washington.
In the end…
The Islanders outplayed the Caps over more and over longer
stretches of this game, particularly early in the contest, than vice
versa. In that respect the result is not
surprising. However, this was a game
that was lying in plain sight, waiting to be stolen. There is nothing to suggest that panic is in
order, but on the other hand the Caps have been asleep at the start of games
twice in three contests. And now they
have to deal with the possibility of the loss of a valuable, versatile forward
in Eric Fehr.
Falling behind two games to one, losing a forward to
injury, letting a chance to steal a game get away, uneven play from the big
guns, inconsistent production from the secondary scorers. A team often has to deal with adversity and
overcome it on their way to a deep playoff run.
Well, this is what adversity looks like for the Caps. We will see if they deal with it any better
than they have in past playoff seasons when they take the ice for Game 4.
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