Fresh and exciting was not exactly how this contest started for the Oilers. A
big reason for that is despite the obvious talent and potential
Edmonton has up front, there is still work to do on the back end. That
shortcoming was on display early in the first period when Mathieu
Perrault beat defenseman Ryan Whitney to a loose puck deep in the
Edmonton end to avoid an icing call. Perreault slipped behind the Oiler net to goalie Devan Dubnyk’s left. Coming
out the other side Perreault had an opportunity to shoot, but he found
Jason Chimera on the opposite side with a stride on the other Oiler
defenseman Ladislav Smid. Perreault
found Chimera with a pass that merely had to be redirected through the
short side before Dubnyk could get across to block the shot. Chimera did just that, and the Caps had a 1-0 lead at 5:33 of the period.
It was a good start for the Caps, but the Oilers paid it no mind. Barely
two minutes later the visitors got the goal back when Nugent-Hopkins
stepped around Jay Beagle, then froze defenseman Mike Green with a faked
shot. It gave Nugent-Hopkins
time to take one more step to get a better shooting angle, and his
wrister from between the hash-marks beat goalie Michal Neuvirth cleanly
to tie the game.
The Oilers took the lead when Nugent-Hopkins played the role of set-up man. Holding
the puck at the goal-line to the left of Neuvirth he sent the puck
through the slot to Jordan Eberle left open at the edge of the left wing
circle. Eberle one-timed the puck over Neuvirth’s left shoulder to put the Oilers on top, 2-1. There
was no other scoring in the period, but enough damage was done for the
Oilers to take that lead and a lead on the shot meter of 13-5 into the
locker room after 20 minutes.
The
Oilers came out flying in the second period, the Caps seeming to be a
step or more behind every time an Oiler forward touched the puck. What
seemed inevitable came to pass in the fourth minute of the period when
Sam Gagner and Taylor Hall worked a give-and-go, Hall finishing the
return pass to put the Oiler up by a 3-1 margin at the 3:48 mark.
Sometimes with a young group of talented players, their focus will start to wander when things are going well. That might have been the case when the Oilers had a chance to put the game away mid-way through the period. The Oilers were guilty of over-passing and passing up good opportunities, and it finally bit them. Nugent-Hopkins
tried to backhand a pass through the hash-marks, and Karl Alzner got a
stick on it to deflect it to the side boards. Brooks Laich was there to collect the puck, and he sent it up to Chimera, who was streaking out of the Caps’ zone. Having taken Laich’s lead pass in stride, Chimera used his speed to foil the angle that Nick Schultz thought he had on him. His snap shot from between the circles beat Dubnyk through the five-hole, and the Caps were back to within a goal.
The
goal got the Caps’ crowd back into the game, and the cheering turned
into a roar when Nail Yakupov made the mistake of lowering
his head as he was about to cut into the middle of the ice just inside
the Caps’ blue line with just over five minutes left in the period. Just
as he crossed over, Alex Ovechkin lowered his shoulder into the rookie
and dropped him to the ice like a sack of wet cement. Yakupov skated slowly to the Edmonton bench, but did return later. The
hit changed the momentum to the Capitals, putting the Oilers back on
their heels and exposing once more their comparatively weaker blue line
and goaltending. Mathieu Perreault took advantage of it when he settled into open ice at Dubnyk’s left late in the period. From
there he put the finishing touches on a pass from behind the Oiler cage
by Marcus Johansson, drawing the Caps even at 3-3 with just over a
minute left in the middle period. The teams went to their locker rooms with no further scoring, but the Oilers still holding a 27-17 edge in shots.
Once
momentum is lost it is hard to regain, and the Oilers found that out when the Caps struck in the first minute of the third
period. Matt Hendricks scored
his first goal of the season when he and Jay Beagle double-teamed Theo
Peckham in the left wing corner to Dubnyk’s right. Hendricks kicked the puck free and headed to the net while Beagle chased the puck down along the end wall. Before
Peckham could recover and throttle Beagle, the Caps forward slid the
puck out front where Hendricks batted it in through Dubnyk’s pads to
give the Caps the lead again at 4-3.
Jack
Hillen scored his first goal as a Capital in the period’s eighth minute
when his wrist shot was deadened in front by an Oiler. The
puck’s change of pace and direction was cause for it to skitter by
Dubnyk’s left pad on the far side, giving the Caps a two-goal margin at
5-3. From there the Caps forced Edmonton to play zone-to-zone, denying them the opportunity for
stretch or cross-ice passes that could break a skater free for a
scoring chance. The Oilers
played into the Caps’ hand by trying to force passes through the middle
of the ice or trying 60-foot passes that were frequently deflected away
from their targets. It made for a
boring final ten minutes of the game, especially considering the
scoring over the first 50 minutes, but that suited the Caps just fine as
they skated off with their fifth straight win, 5-3.
Capitals 5 – Oilers 3
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