Elias Lindholm’s power-play goal at 7:41 of the third period snapped a 1-1 tie and lifted the Boston Bruins to a 3-1 win over the Capitals on Wednesday night at Capital One Arena. In the season opener for both teams Marco Sturm picked up his first career victory as an NHL head coach.
“It feels great,” says Sturm, a former Capital. “I’m exhausted, though. This is the moment I was waiting for, and to grab a win on the road in a tough place like here, that’s even better. And on top of it, for the most part, they played exactly what we worked on, they played exactly how I wanted them to play. And that makes me happy.”
Boston won the special teams battle and the game; they cashed in on one of their two power plays while killing off all five Washington power plays, all of which came in the first 33 minutes of the game. Included in that stretch was a two-man advantage of nearly a minute in duration for Washington.
Two and a half weeks after they opened their respective preseason slates against one another in Boston, the Capitals and the Bruins ended up seeing each other again in their season opener, their third meeting in 18 days.
The two teams skated to a scoreless – but not snoreless – first period. The first 20 minutes of Wednesday’s season opener looked much more like the first period of a preseason game; both teams seemed to be fighting the puck and the bounces; play was sloppy on both sides. A quartet of minor penalties – three of them on the Bruins – were whistled, preventing any sense of pace or flow at 5-on-5.
“You can tell guys are off early in the game,” says Caps coach Spencer Carbery. “I can tell right away, in the first couple of shifts. You want guys to be able to work their way through it, and as it starts to move, now I’m looking for chemistry. Now I’m looking for guys that are going, and trying to get them together so they can score.”
In the 13:13 of even strength time in the first, the Caps were out-attempted by a 13-4 count, but again, neither team was sharp and plenty of shots were airmailed high or wide of the net by both teams. Six of Washington’s eight shots on net in the first came on the power play.
In the final minute of the first, Brandon Duhaime drew a cross-checking call that resulted in a Washington power play – its third of the game – that carried over into the middle period.
When Alex Ovechkin drew a tripping call 19 seconds into the second, the Caps found themselves looking at a two-man advantage of 54 seconds in duration. Washington squeezed off two shot attempts, but the first missed the mark and the second was blocked. A fifth power play opportunity later in the second also failed to bear fruit; the Caps put 11 shots on Bruins goaltender Jeremy Swayman during those five extra-man opportunities.
“The first couple of games, it’s always going to be different,” says Caps captain Alex Ovechkin of his team’s performance on the power play. “It’s going to be a different pace, going to be a different atmosphere, and maybe you’re going to hold the stick too tight. But it’s the first game for both teams, and you could see there’s lots of bounces and lots of miscommunication.”
Just after the midpoint of the middle frame, the Bruins took a 1-0 lead when David Pastrnak floated a seeing eye shot through traffic and behind Washington’s Logan Thompson at 12:07. It marked the fourth straight season opener in which Pastrnak has scored for Boston; he also assisted on each of the Bruins’ other two goals.
The Caps put 18 shots on Swayman in the second but weren’t able to solve him, and Boston carried its 1-0 lead into the third.
Just after the seven-minute mark of the third, the Caps finally broke the spell on a bit of a broken play that culminated in a Tom Wilson goal from the slot at 7:03, squaring the score at 1-1.
“Pro [and I] locked eyes,” recounts Wilson, “and we tried to thread the needle. I think it hit [Jakob Chychrun’s] stick, and hit me in the chest and fell in front of me. I knew if I could shoot it quick, I’d have a good chance. If you can get it off quick, you give yourself a better opportunity against some of these goalies that are feeling it on a night like tonight. And it went in.”
That was as good as it would get for the Caps on this night, though. Fifteen seconds after the Wilson goal, the Caps went shorthanded for the second time in the game. Washington won the draw in its own end of the ice, but the Bruins went the length of the ice in a matter of seconds on the game-winner.
Pavel Zacha sprung Pastrnak into the Washington zone with a sharp indirect feed. As Lindholm cruised toward the slot, Pastrnak fed him perfectly, and Lindholm tucked a backhander behind Thompson to restore the Boston lead a mere 38 seconds after Wilson’s tying goal.
Morgan Geekie scored into an empty Washington net in the final minute to account for the 3-1 final.
Washington dropped its season opener at home a year ago too, and things turned out fine in the end. Wednesday’s game wasn’t pretty, but the Caps did put 35 pucks on Swayman and they teed up 82 shot attempts – at all strengths – to 54 for Boston in a game in which neither team led by more than a goal until the final minute.
“I don’t think we won the first one last year, and we ended up all right last year, too,” says Chychrun. “We’re going to be all right in here. I thought we did some good things tonight, and we had a lot of good looks. [Swayman] played a heck of a game, so credit to him.”
The Caps played Wednesday’s game in honor of Alan Dowd, the late father of Caps center Nic Dowd. Stickers with Dowd’s uniform No. 26 and the word “Pops” laid over it were affixed to the Caps’ helmets prior to the game.
“We were playing for Dowder tonight,” says Wilson. “It was an emotional one for him, losing his dad. It’s too bad we couldn’t get the outcome, because we were all battling for him. He’s such a great teammate, such a great person. He’s had a tough couple of weeks, and I’m proud of him showing up tonight. We couldn’t get the win, but I’m proud of him as a teammate and as a friend. It’s not easy.”
