All it took was a well-timed day off and some home cooking, and the Capitals found their way back on track. Washington’s brief three-game slide (0-2-1) is a thing of the past after a convincing 4-0 win over the Toronto Maple Leafs on Thursday night at Capital One Arena.
Logan Thompson stopped all 22 shots he faced, Jakob Chychrun scored twice, and Washington’s penalty killing outfit successfully snuffed out five Toronto power plays while allowing just five shots to get through to Thompson.
Justin Sourdif’s line had a strong bounce-back game, throttling the top Toronto trio while helping to cobble together half of Washington’s goals. And the Caps were able to re-establish their formidable low-to-high game in the offensive zone, which posed many problems for the visitors tonight.
It all added up to a much-needed victory, a game that Thompson termed the team’s best of the season.
“I think there's a strong case you can make for that,” agrees Caps coach Spencer Carbery, “especially in all areas; I would include both special teams in that too. The penalty kill did a great job tonight. The power play I thought was phenomenal; even though they don't get rewarded, they were all over it – did a really good job.
“You could tell early on – even before the game – there was a real sharpness and focus to the group in their preparation. It doesn't mean you're always going to win, but you can usually tell our team in these spots that our leadership does a real good job of it is they're dialed in and ready when the puck drops.”
The opening period didn’t go how the Caps scripted it – they went shorthanded three times, including in the first minute of the game – but it worked out to the tune of a two-goal lead after 20 minutes of play.
The first half of the first frame featured four minor penalties – two on each side – but no power-play goals, and a lot of guys on both sides waiting for the special team festival to finish.
Washington had gone more than two full games without scoring at 5-on-5, but the Caps remedied that issue in the back half of the opening period.
The Caps were able to put together an offensive zone shift, one in which they won a puck battle and pushed the disc to the right point, where Carlson pumped it back down toward the Toronto net. Sourdif retrieved it, and from behind the cage, threaded a feed to the crowded slot area, where Aliaksei Protas used his boardinghouse reach to jam it home for a 1-0 Washington lead at 13:53.
Less than three minutes later, the Caps doubled down.
The second goal had some similarities to the first, but with a role reversal. Jakob Chychrun came away with the puck behind the Leafs’ net, and he put a feed to the left point where Connor McMichael was temping. McMichael put it back down low for Ethen Frank; it clicked off the latter’s stick and bounded back out on the other side where an opportunistic Chychrun was waiting to pop it past Toronto netminder Dennis Hildeby at 16:16 of the first.
“I kind of found myself low, and just made a play out of the corner to Mikey, who was covering for me,” recounts Chychrun. “And he made a nice play off the net. Frankie was able to just kind of whack it to the backside, and I just beat the guy to the net.”
The Caps had to put together a third spotless penalty kill to usher that 2-0 cushion to the first intermission.
Washington and Toronto both killed off penalties in the back half of the second, and the Caps took their two-goal cushion into the final frame.
Early in the third, the Caps protected that lead by denying the Leafs entry at the Washington line and by putting together a couple of offensive zone shifts that whittled the clock down.
“That was just how we were playing all night,” says Thompson, who notched his 14th victory and his second shutout of the season. “We weren’t happy with the last two games. Everyone seemed bought into the system and was working their asses off, and like I said, it showed out there tonight.”
Just after the four-minute mark, Chychrun struck again.
During a quick neutral zone regroup while the Caps got back onside after the puck leaked out between the bluelines and Toronto executed a change, Chychrun took a feed from Nic Dowd and held onto to it – on the far side of the ice away from the benches – just until Washington cleared the zone. Then he zipped down toward the left dot, where he rifled a wrist shot to the far corner past Hildeby to make it a 3-0 Caps advantage at 4:02.
Just under five minutes later, Carlson – who also had a terrific game with a dominant night on the possession front and three points (one goal, two assists) – clapped a sweet Sourdif feed past Hildeby from the right half wall to close out the scoring at 8:53.
Carlson became the ninth American-born defenseman to author 30 three-point games, and his second assist enabled him to tie Ryan Suter (589) for the fifth-most assists by an American-born blueliner.
“We had power play opportunities; the power play was not good,” says Leafs coach Craig Berube. “It’s got to be a lot better, and we need to play with ore passion than we did tonight; that’s what it boils down to. It looked to me like they had way more urgency in their game, more passion in their game. That’s the difference.”
Toronto came into town with a 5-1-2 mark since they fell 4-2 to Washington here on Nov. 28. Sourdif and his linemates thoroughly thwarted the Leafs’ top line of captain Auston Matthews, Matthew Knies and William Nylander.
All three were held without a single shot on net at 5-on-5, and the trio was a combined minus-6 at night’s end.
“I thought we just made it really easy for them,” says Matthews. “The neutral zone was a highway for them to get through, and we just made it so easy for them. They’re obviously a skilled team with a lot of talent and a lot of speed, and I don’t think we put enough stress on them on both sides of the puck.”
