The last of the ten games that mattered to the Washington
Capitals in the 2013-2014 was quite literally the last game that mattered. A playoff spot was still possible, and there
was still a player on the brink of a momentous achievement.
April 8, 2014: Washington (35-30-13) at St. Louis (52-19-7)
Result: Capitals 4 – Blues 1
The Background: With
just four games left in the 2013-2014 season the Capitals’ post season hopes
were hanging by a thread. On the day
the Caps would face the Blues, Washington was four points behind the Columbus
Blue Jackets for the last playoff spot.
It was likely that the Caps would have to win out to have even the
slightest chance at overtaking Columbus.
They were on shaky ground in terms of any likelihood of sweeping their
last four games. The Blues were waking
up with the best record in the Western Conference, even after losing
consecutive games to Colorado and Chicago.
The Caps came into this game on a win over the New York Islanders, but
that went to the Gimmick and broke what had been a five-game losing streak for
the Caps (0-3-2).
Why It Mattered: Scottrade Center was not a good place for the Capitals to spend a hockey game. In their previous ten trips to St. Louis,
Washington had a 1-8-1 record. On the
other hand, the Blues had 28 wins at home going into this game, tied for second
most home wins in the league. The Caps
played the Blues even for much of the first period, though. Through the first 16 minutes the Blues held a
7-5 lead in shots, but the game was scoreless.
Then, with 3:37 left in the opening frame Derek Roy was sent to the
penalty box for hooking Alex Ovechkin, unleashing the Caps’ lethal power play…
you would think.
In the first 90 seconds of the Caps’ man advantage the Blues
recorded the only two shots on goal, although one was officially recorded as
being from 163 feet. In the 91st
second, things changed on an odd play that ended in familiar fashion. It started when Jason Chimera left the puck
for Evgeny Kuznetsov along the right wing wall
Kuznetsov, occupying the spot Nicklas Backstrom would usually man,
scanned the ice and tried to hit Joel Ward in the middle of the Caps’ 1-3-1.
The pass was slightly off the mark, and Ward had no play but to try to stop the
puck with his skate. What he ended up
doing was kicking it back to John Carlson at the top of the offensive
zone. Carlson laid the puck out for Alex
Ovechkin at the left wing faceoff circle, and Ovechkin one-timed the puck past
goalie Ryan Miller, off the far post and in to give the Caps a 1-0 lead that
they took to the first intermission. It
was Ovechkin’s 50th goal of the season.
The Blues tied it early in the second period when Maxim
Lapierre put back a rebound of a Steve Ott shot past goalie Braden Holtby at
the 2:39 mark after the Caps failed several times to clear the puck out of
their own end. That might have swung the
momentum to the home team, but neither team could light the lamp over the next
six minutes. It would be the Caps
breaking the tie in the ninth minute of the period. With the teams playing 4-on-4 the play started
with Mikhail Grabovski and Eric Fehr heading up ice on a 2-on-2 rush. Grabovski curled in front of Fehr and wristed
a shot at Miller, but he fanned on the attempt.
He recovered the puck in stride and turned around the left wing faceoff
circle, then stepped up to the faceoff dot where he fired a slap shot at
Miller. The shot beat Miller cleanly
past his blocker.
The Caps added to their lead late in the second period when
Nicklas Backstrom made the pipe his friend as Ovechkin did in the first
period. Backstrom worked a give-and-go
with Ovechkin, starting the sequence when he passed the puck to Ovechkin on the
right wing at the red line. Ovechkin
skated the puck down the wall into the Blues’ zone and waited until the defense
backed off. Backstrom eased off the
throttle a bit to give Ovechkin a passing lane, and Ovechkin found him,
Backstrom one-timing a snap shot off the post past Miller and in, making it
3-1.
The Caps ended any thought of a Blues comeback in the first
minute of the third period. With Jaden
Schwartz in the penalty box for the Blues, Backstrom converted on the power
play when he took a cross-ice feed from Ovechkin, took a step inside to change
his shooting angle, then wristed the puck past Miller for game’s last tally
just 16 seconds into the period. The
Blues outshot the Caps, 9-1, over the rest of the period, but Holtby turned all
of them aside, the Caps skating off with a 4-1 win.
The Takeaway: The win
kept the Caps in the playoff hunt, if only briefly. The Blue Jackets won their game against the
Phoenix Coyotes on the same night, then beat the Dallas Stars on the following
night to clinch the last playoff spot and eliminate the Capitals. It meant that the Caps would be shut out of
the post-season for the first time since 2007.
There was the matter of Ovechkin’s 50th goal,
though. It was the fifth time in nine
seasons he hit that mark. Since he came
into the league in 2005-2006 he had more 5-goal seasons any other player in the
league, more than twice as many as Dany Heatley, Ilya Kovalchuk, or Steven
Stamkos (two apiece).
For Holtby it was a fine performance in an unexpected start,
given to him when his partner in the pipes, Jaroslav Halak might or might not have begged off facing his former team.
In the end…
After this, the Caps had only to play out the string. It was not a long string, just
three games. To their credit, the Caps
went 2-0-1 in those games, the extra time loss coming in a double shutout in
the season’ finale against Tampa Bay that the Caps lost, 1-0, in the
Gimmick. On this night, though, the Caps
would show, if just for one more time, what was possible when the big guns –
Ovechkin (1-2-3) and Backstrom (2-0-2) – were producing, and the team was
getting solid goaltending (28 saves on 29 shots for Holtby). In that sense the game mattered out of a
sense of hope that the Caps could piece together more results like this in
2014-2015.
Photo: Mark Buckner/NHLI via Getty Images
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