For the first time in almost exactly 19 years, the Capitals made the trek north to play a preseason game at Hershey’s Giant Center, the building where Washington’s AHL affiliate has thrived for the last two decades. For many of the Caps’ staff and players, Thursday’s game against the Philadelphia Flyers was very much a homecoming, and it turned out to be quite the happy one at that. The Caps skated away with a convincing 5-1 victory.
“It was amazing,” says Caps coach Spencer Carbery, who spent three seasons here as the Bears’ head coach. “To come back here to Giant Center, to walk out to a full building, even driving in on the bus today I had some goose bumps at various moments, pulling up and walking through this building. There’s a lot of great memories here.
“To be able to come back and play the way that we did, I’m really proud of the group.”
The Caps played a rigid and stingy game at 5-on-5, they scored on both special teams and generated and created many excellent scoring chances at 5-on-5 in the win over the Flyers. For the second time in as many games, Sonny Milano (two goals) and Hendrix Lapierre (three assists) paced the Washington attack. Both players have amassed six points in two preseason games.
“I’m feeling good,” says Lapierre. “I think it’s just a continuation of what I’ve been doing this summer. I’ve been working really hard and trying to get better. Obviously, it’s going really well right now, but it’s only two games so I just want to keep it going.”
Clay Stevenson went the distance in goal for the Caps, stopping 15 of 16 shots to pick up the win. Seven of the 16 shots he faced – and the only one sent his way in the third period – came on the Philadelphia power play, which was fruitless in four opportunities, including a two-man advantage of 41 seconds in duration.
Over the game’s final 44 minutes, Philadelphia generated exactly three shots on net at 5-on-5, a trio of shots in rapid succession late in the second that resulted in the Flyers’ lone goal of the game, off the stick of Jacob Gaucher from the slot, after Stevenson shut down the first two attempts.
“I thought we did a really good job of breaking pucks out,” says Carbery. “It was very rare that we were going back to get the puck and couldn’t find a way out of our zone. And I just thought that we did a really good job with puck possession in the offensive zone.”
Washington went on its first power play of the preseason at the first television timeout of the first frame, and although it took the Caps the better part of the two minutes to generate a shot on the Philadelphia net, they only needed one.
On the left side of the ice, Lapierre and Andrew Cristall played catch for a bit, and after taking a return from Lapierre, Cristall fired a shot from the left dot that beat Philly goaltender Dan Vladar at 8:11. Declan Chisholm picked up the second helper on the goal that lifted the Caps to a 1-0 lead.
The Flyers didn’t manage their first shot on net until the seven-minute mark of the first, and Stevenson handled that one and four more without incident. His best stop of the frame came on a sudden Jack Nesbitt shot from the slot with just under five minutes left in the first; it was the last even strength shot the Flyers managed until that brief fusillade that resulted in Gaucher's goal.
Just ahead of the midpoint of the middle frame, the Caps doubled their lead on a successful neutral zone regroup. Dylan Strome sent Ivan Miroshnichenko into Philadelphia ice on the left side, and the Russian winger beat Flyers defenseman Helge Grans wide, cutting sharply to his right and tucking the puck behind Philly goaltender Aleksei Kolosov – who relieved Vladar at the start of the second – to make it a 2-0 Washington lead at 9:10.
Just over two minutes later, Milano netted his third goal of the preseason, sneaking a shot through from the slot after Lapierre made a heady play send Vincent Iorio down the right side with the puck. Iorio was patient; he waited until the right moment to put the puck to the front where Milano was one of a few bodies on the spot. Milano’s marker made it 3-0 at 11:13.
“I wanted a [one-timer] from [Lapierre],” recounts Iorio. “Obviously, he’s been absolutely on fire, absolutely on fire. He was able to make a play and I was able to read what he was going to do, I came over the top and I saw the [defenseman] underneath, so I figured I’d pump-fake. I got lucky with my pass, and Sonny was able to bury it.”
Washington found itself in some penalty trouble late in the period, resulting in a two-man for the Flyers. Philly called its timeout to draw something up, but Stevenson and the Caps’ penalty killing outfit were equal to the task. Stevenson made the two saves he needed to make to snuff out the 5-on-3, and Washington’s penalty killers took care of the rest, spending a good chunk of the second penalty in Philly’s end of the rink.
From the latter stages of the first until virtually the same juncture of the second, the Caps held Philadelphia without a single shot on net at 5-on-5, a span of roughly 20 minutes of playing time. Philly broke that spell – and Stevenson’s shutout bid – all at once, but it needed three cracks to get it done. After Stevenson made a pair of stops in quick succession, Gaucher found and potted the rebound into a yawning cage at 15:51 to make it a 3-1 game.
Early in the third, the Flyers went on the power play again, and Connor McMichael broke loose at the Washington line, and tore in on a 2-on-0 rush with Aliaksei Protas riding shotgun. From the bottom of the left circle, McMichael called his own number and sniped a shot home at 1:07 of the final frame to make it a 4-1 contest.
Washington had a couple of lamplighters in the middle of the third, but neither counted. Lapierre’s stick was deemed to be too high when he made a deft deflection of Dylan McIlrath’s right point drive; that one was washed away after the stripes huddled up to share their intel.
Soon after, Iorio was robbed. Even us folks with fading eyesight sitting in the press box saw his precision shot whiz past the earhole of Kolosov, hit the back bar and bounce out. But the stripes saw it differently, and that’s all that matters.
Milano accounted for the 5-1 final when he converted from the slot on another fine feed from Lapierre with 63 seconds left in the game.
The game was also noteworthy for the presence of two pairs of brothers in the Washington lineup, an occurrence the NHL hasn’t seen – in the regular season – since 2002. Dylan and Matt Strome and Aliaksei and Ilya Protas were suited up for the Caps, making for a memorable and special night those four players won’t forget.
“I was glad we could do that,” says Carbery. “And Stromer’s dad was able to make it. You never know if that moment will come again for the rest of their lives. In 20 years when they’re both retired, they’ll be talking about tonight, sharing that moment at Giant Center in a sold out building. I think that’s pretty cool for those guys to be able to share that, so I’m glad.”
