For the second time in a week, the Washington Capitals faced
off against the Ottawa Senators. The
only differences, it seemed were the venue and color of jerseys. The actual playing of the game in Ottawa
resembled the 2-1 Caps win in Washington as the Caps survived another grinding
game against the Sens, coming out on top, 1-0.
The Caps got off and running early. It was the product of an historic play. Dmitry Orlov started the play by peeking
around from behind his own net and sending the puck up to Nate Schmidt at the
blue line. Schmidt took a couple of
strides, then from the red line fed Nicklas Backstrom skating down the
middle. After gaining the Ottawa blue
line, he slid a backhand pass to T.J. Oshie at the top of the left wing circle,
and Oshie fired a one-timer that beat goalie Mike Condon over his left shoulder
on the far side just 1:38 into the game.
For Backstrom, it was his 500th career assist, the first
player in team history to hit that mark.
And for the scoring, that was it. For the next 58 minutes and change, it was
the Braden Holtby show. He turned away
all 30 shots he faced to seal the 1-0 win.
Other stuff…
-- Reaching the 500-assist mark is not the only noteworthy
aspect of Nicklas Backstrom’ milestone in this game. Backstrom reached that mark in his 691st
game with the club. As Craig Laughlin
noted in the Caps telecast, only Peter Forsberg among players born in Sweden
reached the 500-assist mark in fewer games than Nicklas Backstrom. Forsberg did it is 551 games. And, as Laughlin pointed out, only two active
players – Jaromir Jagr and Sidney Crosby – got to 500 sooner than
Backstrom. Jagr did it in 642 games,
while Crosby did it in 554 games. It's a lot of apples.
-- T.J. Oshie took a Dion Phaneuf hit square on his shoulder
in the first minute of the second period and was forced to get treatment in the
locker room (clean hit by Phaneuf). He missed
four minutes before returning to the lineup.
It is, however, the same shoulder he injured against Detroit earlier in
the year, causing him to miss seven games, and he did head back down the tunnel
to the locker room late in the second period after being abused by Phaneuf one
more time.
-- Braden Holtby pitched his second straight shutout, tying
him with Minnesota’s Devan Dubnyk for the league lead (five). In his last 11 appearances, he is 6-2-2 (one
no-decision), 1.44, .947, with four shutouts.
Looks like he’s back in the Vezina conversation.
-- Tom Wilson had one of those inspirational plays that
lifts a team. On a late Ottawa power
play, Wilson sacrificed his body to get in the way of an Erik Karlsson bomb, a
block that stung him and had him hobbling to the bench.
-- Washington’s power play continues to struggle. Not that they had many opportunities. They were 0-for-2 and had one shot in 4:00 of
power play time, a 42-footer from Alex Ovechkin.
-- The Caps had just 20 shots on goal for the contest, and
Lars Eller (no, that’s not a misprint) had almost a third of them (six, and
that’s not a misprint, either).
-- Speaking of “almost a third,” John Carlson had six
blocked shots, almost a third of the 21 that the Caps had for the game.
-- And in more of “thirds,” Jay Beagle had more than a third
of the Caps’ 30 faceoff wins, going 11-for-19 (57.9 percent), including a big
defensive zone win late in the third period.
-- Alex Ovechkin played just 16:02 in this game. The Caps are 15-0-1 when he logs 17:30 or
less in ice time.
-- In one of the odd, infrequent results of this game,
Evgeny Kuznetsov won eight of 11 faceoffs.
This is not the strongest part of Kuznetsov’s game.
In the end…
We had the feeling early on this season that the Caps were
suffered a form of post-traumatic stress syndrome after their overtime exit in
the playoffs last season. They seemed
sluggish, disengaged, and unfocused for long stretches of their first 23
games. But since they beat Buffalo in
overtime on December 5th, the Caps are 12-2-2 and seem to find
different ways to win each night, whether it’s lighting up the hottest team and
the hottest goalie in the league for five goals, as they did against Columbus
on Thursday in a 5-0 win, or playing smothering defense with sharp goaltending
in a tight, low-scoring game, as they did tonight. It’s an example that it’s not how, it’s how
many…wins, that is. Let’s just hope T.J.
Oshie is not out for any extended length of time but takes all the time he
needs to get well.
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