Desperately seeking to steer themselves out of a six-game slide, the Capitals summoned their best 60-minute effort of the season on Saturday afternoon in Boston, and they did so against the League’s top team and in one of the most difficult buildings in the League, TD Garden.
Charlie Lindgren made 18 saves to earn a 3-0 shutout victory, his third whitewash of the season and the first by a visiting goaltender in Boston in more than a year. Boston entered Saturday’s game with a 51-9-6 home record in the last two seasons, and Washington’s relentless performance had the local boo birds out in full throat for much of the afternoon.
Lindgren’s clean sheet made T.J. Oshie’s power-play goal early in the second – in the midst of a five-minute Washington power play – stand up as the game-winner. Dylan Strome added a massive insurance strike early in the third, and Caps’ captain Alex Ovechkin iced it with a late empty-netter.
As they boarded the plane in Boston late Saturday afternoon to hustle home for a Sunday date with Vancouver, the Caps enjoy the distinction of being the only team in the NHL to hand Boston a pair of home ice setbacks in regulation since the start of last season.
“Our most complete game of the year, hands down, start to finish, in all the different areas that we needed to be dialed in, and we were,” exudes Caps’ coach Spencer Carbery. “Pace was there, competitiveness; they're a hard, heavy team, and they get to the net. We won a ton of wall yellow battles. Special teams as well, we step up and score a huge goal in that five-minute major, and the penalty kill was fantastic tonight. And our structure, we were so connected with everything that we did in all three zones. It was an impressive effort today.”
The Caps came out with a great deal of verve and fire right from the opening face-off of Saturday’s game. With their mentors in the building and a national television audience watching at home, the Caps were focused and assertive in a fast-paced first frame.
Boston goaltender Jeremy Swayman needed to make a strong stop early on Connor McMichael, and the first stoppage in play didn’t come until almost eight minutes into the game when Washington went on the game’s first power play.
The Caps were quick and efficient in exiting their zone, and they were able to sustain some shifts at the other end of the ice as well. Late in the opening period, during one of those sustained shifts, Boston blueliner Matt Grzelcyk was guilty of spearing Washington winger Max Pacioretty in the stones, leading to the exit of both players from the ice surface. Pacioretty went off in pain and hobbled down the tunnel; Grzelcyk was excused for the remainder of the afternoon via a five-minute major and a game misconduct for his misdeed.
The Caps went on an all-you-can-eat, five-minute power play with 1:47 left in the first, and Boston needed Swayman to make a few more saves – and a total of 15 altogether in the first – to get to first intermission with the game still scoreless.
Washington opened the second frame with plenty of power play time remaining, and with Pacioretty having recovered enough to rejoin his mates on the ice. That proved to be a factor; it was Pacioretty who issued the sublime feed from below the goal line to Oshie, setting up the latter’s power-play tally at 1:05 of the second, giving Lindgren all the offensive support he would need.
As well as they played in the first – outshooting Boston 15-4 – the Caps might have been better in the second. The Bruins weren’t able to muster much offensive zone times and rarely threatened near the Washington net.
“We took away a lot of their time and space tonight,” says Lindgren. “I’m closer to their bench in the second period, and we were frustrating them big time. It felt like shift after shift, I was seeing their guys go to the bench all slamming the door, and just frustrated. We made it hard on them tonight.”
When Boston finally managed its seventh shot on net of the game – a 59-foot floater from Brad Marchand, the first puck on Lindgren in nearly seven minutes – with exactly a minute left in the second, fans came together for a derisive cheer for the local squad.
Boston finally mustered some pushback in the third, and Lindgren’s first save of the third was a nifty stop on Charlie Coyle’s tip-in try from in tight. Seconds later, the Caps broke it out, and Ovechkin issued a sweetly sauced feed to set up Strome’s shot to the shelf for a 2-0 Washington lead at 3:24.
The Bruins drew a trio of penalties in less than 10 minutes, but the Caps’ penalty killing outfit was up to the task. Washington yielded only 11 shots at even-strength all game, and they limited the Bruins to just five shots in eight minutes worth of power play time.
When Ovechkin made a neat indirect to set himself up for the empty-netter at 19:33, he broke Wayne Gretzky’s all-time NHL record for most goals into an empty net. The Great Eight now has a dozen on the season, and 57 empty-net strikes for his career.
Ovechkin’s goal sealed Washington’s second victory in this building in its last three regular season visits; the Caps claimed a 2-1 win here almost exactly one year ago, on Feb. 11, 2023, the fourth of only four regulation losses Boston absorbed at home last season.
“I think the Caps have had some success in this rink the last couple of years,” says Strome. “And we won here in preseason when Matty Phillips scored that beautiful goal. They’re a great hocky team. They have a lot of high-end players, and when Grzelcyk gets knocked out of the game in the first period, we know that they’re down to five [defensemen], so we know we have to keep the pressure on the rest of the game. I thought we did a good job of that, and we capitalized on that long power play.
“All in all, a good game. But we’ve got to keep it going [Sunday against Vancouver].”
