Pittsburgh opened the scoring with a goal midway through the
first period, Carl Hagelin taking a feed from Nick Bonino in the high slot,
stepping up, and snapping a shot past goalie Braden Holtby’s glove and off the
post into the net to make it 1-0, 10:24 into the game.
It looked as if the 1-0 score would hold up going into the
first intermission, but the Caps got even in the last minute. It was a matter of patience by Andre
Burakovsky. Leaving the puck at the
Penguin blue line for Kevin Shattenkirk, he let Shattenkirk carry the puck in
before sliding in behind him.
Shattenkirk left the puck for Burakovaky, who backed his way across the
top of the left wing faceoff circle, toe-dragging the puck around Matt Cullen,
then snapping a shot past the blocker of goalie Marc-Andre Fleury on the near
side with just 29.7 seconds left in the period.
Pittsburgh regained the lead early in the second period on a
power play. With Nate Schmidt in the
penalty box on a holding call, the Pens worked the puck between and below the
faceoff dots adeptly, Evgeni Malkin finally sending a pass through the slot to
Phil Kessel alone low in the left wing circle.
Holtby got a piece of Kessel’s one-timer with the edge of his blocker,
and the puck hit the post, but it found its way in to make it 2-1, 4:20 into
the second period.
It did not take the Caps long to knot the score again in the
third period. It started with Nicklas
Backstrom and Burakovsky skating in formation uip the left wing wall out of the
Caps’ end. Backstrom fed Burakovsky the
puck at the red line, and Burakovsky skated the puck into the Penguin end. Burakovsky worked the puck past Justin
Schultz and onto the stick of Backstrom, who fired a shot under Fleury’s glove
and over his left pad on the far side, 2:49 into the period.
Less than five minutes later, the Caps had their first lead
of the evening. John Carlson out-fought Hagelin
for the puck just inside the Penguins’ blue line, nudging it ahead to Evgeny
Kuznetsov, who dropped the puck back to
Marcus Johansson for a one timer. The
shot was muffled in front and squirted out to Fleury’s right, to Kuznetsov deep
in the left wing circle. Kuznetsov swept
the puck in one motion behind Fleury before the goalie could get back across,
and the Caps had a 3-2 lead at the 7:20 mark.
Just 27 seconds later the lead was two. Alex Ovechkin and Lars Eller ran a
give-and-go heading out of the defensive end, Eller returning the puck to
Ovechkin in stride. Ovechkin carried the
puck over the Penguin blue line and cut to the middle. Trying to use defenseman Ron Hainsey as a
screen, his shot was blocked by Hainsey.
The puck came right back to him, though, and Ovechkin did not let the
second opportunity get away. He ripped a
shot over Fleury’s glove into the top of the net, and it was Caps, 4-2, at the
7:47 mark.
That was all Braden Holtby needed, as he shut out the Pens
the rest of the way, and the Caps had life in a series that looked to be
slipping away.
Other stuff…
-- The goals scored 27 seconds apart by Evgeny Kuznetsov and
Alex Ovechkin were the fastest two goals scored by the Capitals in franchise
playoff history.
-- Ovechkin is now 10-10-20, plus-8 in 19 elimination games
in his career. The Caps are 11-8 in
those games.
-- Over the last three seasons, Pittsburgh was 125-6-3
(regular season and playoffs) when leading after two periods of games. If there was anything approximating a
certainty when the Penguins took a lead into the second intermission, winning
would have been it.
-- Marcus Johansson was credited with more hits (five) than
Tom Wilson (four). T.J. Oshie led the team with seven. The Caps were
credited with 38 hits to 15 for the Penguins.
-- This was the 18th postseason game between
these clubs in the Ovechkin/Crosby era.
It was just the second time in those 18 games the Caps recorded a
multi-goal win. They beat the Penguins,
3-1, in Game 5 in last year’s series.
-- Lars Eller had a pair of assists, his first multi-point
game in the postseason since he had a pair of assists with the Montreal
Canadiens in a 7-4 win over the New York Rangers in Game 5 of their 2014
conference final series.
-- Andre Burakovsky got his first goal of the postseason and
his first playoff goal since Game 1 against the Penguins in their Eastern
Conference semifinal series last spring.
He added an assist to give him his first multi-point game in the
postseason since he had both goals in a 2-1 win over the New York Rangers in
Game 4 of their Eastern Conference semifinal series.
-- Kevin Shattenkirk had an assist to give him points in
each of his last three games in this series (1-2-3, plus-5).
-- Two goals matters.
Braden Holtby allowed just two goal on 22 shots, giving him a 24-11
record in the postseason when allowing two or fewer goals.
-- The Caps did not enjoy the same sort of shot attempt dominance
they displayed over the first four games of the series, but part of that was
score effect. When Alex Ovechkin scored
the Caps’ fourth goal 7:47 into the third period, the Caps had a 43-28 in
5-on-5 shot attempts (60.56 percent).
The Caps finished with a 51-42 edge (54.84 percent; numbers from Corsica.hockey).
In the end…
The Caps gave themselves a chance. Down 1-3 in games, that is all one can ask
for. What might be the best thing about
this game is that it is hard to put your finger on who the hero was. Braden Holtby was sharp, especially over the
last 30 minutes. The Caps got four goals
from four different players. They got
one from the Captain, and they got one from a youngster who desperately needed
one in Andre Burakovsky. Nicklas
Backdstrom and Evgeny Kuznetsov stepped up, as they have to do for the Caps to
pull this series out. The Caps got only
one point from a defenseman (John Carlson had an assist), but they did not
allow the Penguins unfettered access to the front of the Caps’ net. And no Capital finished with a “minus”
rating. It was something on which the
Caps can build. And build is what they
will need to do as the series heads back to Pittsburgh for another elimination
game.
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