Joel Hofer stopped all 21 shots the Caps could muster against him on Tuesday night in St. Louis, helping the Blues improve to 9-2-2 since the Olympic break with his sixth shutout and his 18th victory of the season. Hofer backstopped a 3-0 triumph over Washington, which saw its five-game point streak (3-0-2) halted in the opener of a three-game road trip.
Only the Islanders’ Ilya Sorokin (seven) has more shutouts this season than Hofer.
Caps goaltender Logan Thompson was nearly the equal of Hofer for most of the night, giving his team a chance to win by keeping Washington within a goal until the final five minutes of the third period. Thompson absorbed another hard luck loss in a game in which he yielded two or fewer goals, his ninth such setback of the season (0-5-4).
Jimmy Snuggerud’s goal on a one-timer from the left dot beat Thompson at 2:39 of the second period, giving Hofer all the offensive support he would require on this night.
Washington went long stretches of time without testing Hofer; entering the third period the Caps actually had more shots on the power play (seven) than they had at even strength (six). Not only did Hofer easily handle all the shots the Caps put on him in Tuesday’s game, he helped his defense and his team with his assertive and diligent play with the puck.
“Yeah, it was a big part of our pre-scout is to keep the puck away [from him],” says Caps coach Spencer Carbery. “We know he plays it as good as anybody. Both these [St. Louis goalies, along with Jordan Binnington] play it [well] – probably the two best puck handlers in the National Hockey League – from a goaltenders perspective.
“I thought we did an okay job of it. And when he did touch it, I thought we forechecked it decently well. It's incredible, some of the pucks that he stops, because we made a point to keep it up on the glass. And he'll put his stick lateral and pick them out of midair on a few of them. But I thought we did an okay job. I think he's going to get to a few, but I thought we were okay there. When we got pucks back, we just didn't do nearly enough with those possessions.”
Five minutes after the Snuggerud goal, Ryan Leonard tried to spark the Caps with a scrap against St. Louis forward Otto Stenberg, but to no avail. From the time of the Snuggerud goal to the end of the second period – a span of more than 17 minutes – the Caps managed three shots on Hofer, none from inside of 40 feet away from the St. Louis cage.
Early in the third, the game took a bad turn for the Caps when center Pierre-Luc Dubois was assessed a match penalty on a play in the defensive zone in which he got tangled up with Blues center Robert Thomas. Thomas clearly interfered with Dubois as he was trying to check the puck carrier, and when the two got tangled up together, Thomas fell forcefully into the ice and was down for a minute or so before slowly rising and skating off.
Officials announced the match penalty and said it would be reviewed via video, but that review did not change the outcome.
“Yeah, attempt to injure,” says Carbery, asked what explanation he was given for the match penalty. “The issue that I have with that play is they call the penalty, Robert Thomas is obviously setting a pick on Dubie, where he's impeding his ability to skate through and continue to check the player that he was trying to check. So, [Dubois] is getting interfered with, and now he's trying to get around him, and then they get wrapped up. And it's unfortunate that Thomas gets injured there, but to me, he initiates the contact.
“Obviously, they called it an interference penalty, which Thomas initiates the contact, and then they get locked up and Dubie and him go to the ground and unfortunately, he gets hurt. But that to me, that's not even close to a match penalty, the way that I saw it on the replay 10 or 12 times.”
Aided by a too many men call on St. Louis that turned a chunk of the major into 4-on-4 hockey, the Caps’ penalty killing outfit continued its stellar work, keeping the score at 1-0. But Washington still wasn’t able to stress Hofer in the third, and when Stenberg finished a scoring play at the back door to make it a 2-0 contest at 14:52, the deficit doubled.
Jordan Kyrou’s empty-net goal in the final minute accounted for the 3-0 final score.
“It definitely was tough for us to get things going offensively tonight,” says Caps defenseman Matt Roy. “Credit to them; they played hard and their goalie made some good plays that stopped our momentum a little bit. We’ve just got to fix that and move forward.”
