Wednesday night was a highly anticipated one at Capital One Arena. Home for a single game in the midst of a road heavy stretch of schedule, the Caps were expected to have each of their first-round picks from the 2019-22 NHL Drafts in the lineup together for the first time. But alas, not all of the kids were “all right.”
Connor McMichael was a late scratch because of illness, but the recently recalled Hendrix Lapierre and Ivan Miroshnichenko – the latter of whom made his NHL debut in Wednesday’s game against the Islanders – were both in the lineup and both turned in fine performances as the Caps took a 3-2 overtime decision from the New York Islanders.
Dylan Strome’s power-play goal at 1:41 of the extra session won it for Washington, which also got a multi-point effort from Lapierre (goal, assist) and a 30-save night from Darcy Kuemper, who earned his eighth victory of the season and his third in succession.
Washington never trailed, but the Isles twice evened the score and they proved to be all the Caps could handle, especially in the third period.
“I felt really good about our first two periods; we did a lot of good things,” says Caps’ coach Spencer Carbery. “And then in the third – and we talked about it in between the second and the third – [we knew the Islanders were] not going to go away and just ride off into the sunset, and we were not going backpedal into a win here. They are going to push.
“So we were aware of it, it’s just that for whatever reason, we lost momentum there in the third period, and we’re just scrambling, trying to get that thing to overtime.”
Facing an Islanders team that played a strong game against Edmonton the previous night in a 3-1 victory in New York, the Caps went shorthanded on the game’s first shift. But they shut down an Islanders’ power play that’s been hot of late, holding them without a shot on net.
Washington soon had its own power play opportunity, one that produced some looks and lots of zone time, but no red lights.
The Caps did jump out to a 1-0 lead just ahead of the midpoint of the first frame. Playing without McMichael for the first time this season, Washington elevated the recently recalled Lapierre into the middle of the McMichael line, between Anthony Mantha and Aliaksei Protas. That trio got the Caps’ attack started on Wednesday.
New York’s Brock Nelson turned the puck over with a soft exit attempt, and Protas collected the puck and quickly fed Lapierre in the slot. The rookie pivot snapped a shot that glanced off Isles’ netminder Semyon Varlamov and in, staking Washington to a 1-0 lead at 9:56.
Early in the second period, the Isles pulled even with a goal off the forecheck. Cal Clutterbuck won a puck battle behind the Washington net, and Hudson Fasching collected it, curled around the cage and tucked it through Kuemper’s legs at 1:03 of the middle frame, squaring the score at 1-1.
After both sides failed to capitalize on a second power play opportunity, the Caps jumped back in front shortly after the midpoint of the middle frame. From behind the New York net, Lapierre dealt a feed to Mantha on the left half wall. Mantha put it on a tee for big blueliner Joel Edmundson, who wound up and leaned into a one-timer from center point, a drive that eluded Varlamov low on the glove side for a 2-1 Washington lead at 13:12.
It marked the second straight game in which Washington got a goal from one of its blueliners; the Caps had two goals from the defense in their first 27 games and have doubled the total in the two games since.
The Caps killed off another New York power play late in the second, and they carried that slim 2-1 lead into the third.
Isles’ captain Anders Lee knotted the score with a determined individual effort with 7:58 left. After Tom Wilson knocked Lee off the puck along the half wall in Washington ice, Lee bounced back up, collected a loose puck and barreled to the net, where he beat Kuemper with a backhander to make it a 2-2 game.
The Caps needed Kuemper to make one of his biggest saves of the night about a minute later, a denial of a J-G Pageau attempt from the top of the paint. Kuemper made 15 of his 30 stops in the third period.
Early in overtime, Martin Fehervary drew a tripping call on top Isles’ defenseman Noah Dobson, taking him off the ice at a critical juncture of the contest.
Washington’s first shot on the ensuing power play was a John Carlson drive that Wilson swatted out of the air. After Isles defenseman Robert Bortuzzo blocked an Alex Ovechkin drive from the left dot, Ovechkin teed up Strome, whose wrist shot through a screen found its way in, to the delight of the crowd. But before the Caps could celebrate in earnest, they had to sweat out a League review of the goal; there was some worry as to whether Wilson might have been guilty of playing the puck with a high stick.
“It’s nice to get some momentum on the power play,” says Strome. “I think three of our last four games, we’ve had a power-play goal, so it’s helping us a little bit, and we’ve got to keep doing that.”
When the goal was upheld, the Caps were able to bask in the afterglow of another tight, hard-fought victory, and the performances of two of their three top young pro prospects. The 19-year-old Miroshnichenko, who overcame a Hodgkin’s Lymphoma diagnosis during his draft year of 2022, didn’t collect a point in his debut, but he did impress. And Lapierre has twice this season delivered a multi-point game while filling in for a Washington pivot who was under the weather.
“It’s awesome,” says Caps’ defenseman Trevor van Riemsdyk. “Obviously, Miro’s story is inspirational. I don’t know if you got to see the pregame speech [by longtime Caps’ equipment assistant Craig “Woody” Leydig], but that had everyone fired up. Lappy played awesome, and Miro was throwing his body around. It sparked the whole group.”
“We wanted to come out strong in the first, and we did a great job of that,” says Kuemper. “We got ourselves in a really good spot, up 2-1 about halfway through. They’re on bit of a streak, and they push really hard. We had to defend probably a little bit more than we wanted to in the third there, but we did. We held the fort, and we were able to find a way to get the win.”
