Nic Dowd scored twice and Darcy Kuemper turned aside 32 shots to earn his sixth win of the season as the Caps doubled up the Blackhawks by a 4-2 count at Chicago’s United Center on Sunday night. Coupled with Saturday’s 4-0 whitewash of the Rangers in D.C., Washington has swept three straight sets of back-to-backs.
Right around this time of year in 2018, the Caps swept three straight sets of back-to-back games, doing so for the first time in 27 years. They didn’t wait anywhere near that long to get it done again.
“It wasn’t looking good early,” says Caps’ coach Spencer Carbery. “We were okay, but you could tell we were just fighting it a little bit. And that’s where you see the mental fortitude of our group to dig in there.
“We go down [a goal], and then some guys make massive plays offensively to really give us some life and get our bench going. And then our third was our best period.”
Following a scoreless and uneventful first frame, the Hawks jumped out to a 1-0 lead on a Phillip Kurashev goal at 6:49 of the first. Kuemper made a couple of good saves right before the goal, papering over a couple of turnovers in the Washington end with saves on Jason Dickinson and Joey Anderson. The Caps failed on a couple of chances to clear before Kurashev converted from the slot, redirecting a Seth Jones half wall feed into the net at 6:49 of the middle frame.
Washington answered back quickly, squaring the score at 1-1 when Connor McMichael expertly floated a lead feed to space for Anthony Mantha. Mantha chased the puck down in the slot, made a move and swept a backhander behind Arvid Soderblom at 8:11.
The Caps killed off a Martin Fehervary interference minor midway through the middle period, then grabbed the lead less than a minute later. T.J. Oshie put a monstrous hit on mammoth Hawks defenseman Alex Vlasic behind the Chicago net, separating the blueliner from the biscuit. Alex Ovechkin scooped it up and fed Joel Edmundson in the slot. Edmundson found Dylan Strome lurking on the weak side, put it on his tape, and Strome had an empty net into which he scored his 11th of the season – biting the hand that once fed him – at 13:50.
“Nice to get a goal here,” says Strome. “Eddie made an unbelievable pass, and I just had to put it in. It definitely feels good.”
Edmundson’s primary helper on the Strome goal was his first point as a member of the Capitals.
For the second night in a row, Washington’s fourth line delivered a critical insurance tally, and it made for the Caps’ second three-goal second period in as many nights. Nic Dowd got credit for the goal on an epic goalmouth scramble at 15:23; he was prone on the ice when the puck crossed the line, and there was some question as to whether Dowd or Beck Malenstyn would get credit, but forensics ultimately ruled in favor of the former.
“I felt like I hadn’t been around the net very much in the last week,” says Dowd. “I saw an opportunity to try and poke a puck out to Mal, and I just tried to jump on it. We were fortunate it found its way into the back [of the net] slowly.”
Dowd netted another late in the third, this one on a shot from the slot at 15:58, extending the Washington lead to 4-1. His line had a marvelous weekend, shutting down the Artemi Panarin line on Saturday night and keeping Connor Bedard and company in check on Sunday. And oh by the way, they scored three goals of their own, including Sunday’s game-winner.
“You need depth scoring,” states Dowd. “You need to be good on special teams, and you need to be good on the power play. I thought all that was clicking tonight, and going down the stretch here, we’re going to need contributions from everybody.
“That’s what makes a successful team, knowing that night in and night out, offense is coming from four lines and the three [defense] pairs. And I can’t say enough; our goaltending has been fantastic.”
The Caps gave the Hawks little with which to work in the third, and they kept them on the perimeter for much of the night. But Kuemper – making his first start since he was pulled in the first period in Arizona on Dec. 4 – was excellent, especially when the game was still scoreless.
“I obviously wanted to get back in there,” says Kuemper. “But I took the time to kind of assess what’s been going on. Sometimes when it goes that poorly, like that game in Arizona, it’s not great, but you can use it the right way and look at the big picture. I just wanted to get back to the basics of what I’ve been working on for the last little bit, and it was nice to go out and finally play.”
Washington got a good look at Bedard’s capabilities when the teenaged phenom issued a sublime backhand sauce pass to Connor Murphy, who scored a 4-on-4 goal at 18:18, accounting for the 4-2 final.
“It sucks for him, because it should have been a one-goal game for him,” says Carbery of Kuemper. “And he – in those first two periods – was outstanding. Joey Anderson gets a slot line one-timer, and there’s a turnover right in tight and he makes a big save [on Dickinson]. I felt like he made four or five massive saves when it was 0-0 to let us get back in the fight. Let us get back into this game, and he did exactly that. So that’s a huge start for him.”
Sunday’s win leaves Washington at 4-0-0 in the back half of back-to-backs this season. They’ve got five more of them between now and mid-January.
