Minutes away from pulling off what would have been another character win against a difficult opponent, the Caps couldn’t quite seal the deal on Thursday night at Philadelphia’s Wells Fargo Center. Owen Tippett’s goal through a screen from the high slot with 2:59 remaining tied the game at 3-3, and the Flyers went on to claim a 4-3 victory in the shootout.
Tippett’s goal stung, because the Caps had the puck on their sticks with opportunities to exit their zone, but they were unable to do so, a problem that also led to the first Flyers’ goal of the evening. Instead, Washington found itself on its collective heels after Tippett’s tally, needing some big late saves from Charlie Lindgren just to get the game to overtime.
“I thought we had a lot of good things going for us throughout the game,” says Caps’ coach Spencer Carbery. “I liked our start, liked our second period. I thought we put ourselves in a good position heading to the third period; the power play scores a big goal. I even liked our third period for the first however long.
“We give up the second goal – not a great coverage scenario for us – but then we score relatively quickly right after that to regain the lead; it doesn’t rattle us. And then after that, I thought the game fell apart. We didn’t manage the game very well at all, made some uncharacteristic mistakes, started to do things we haven’t done all year in playing with the lead. We just got back on our heels.”
Both teams found themselves without key players for Thursday’s first meeting of the longtime rivals this season. Caps’ center Evgeny Kuznetsov fell ill in the afternoon and was unable to answer the bell. Philadelphia goaltender Carter Hart also missed the game because of illness; Samuel Ersson got the nod in net for Philly, and Felix Sandstrom was summoned from AHL Lehigh Valley to serve as his backup.
Washington essentially played with three centers, with Nic Dowd notably pulling down 20:30 in ice time – his second highest single-game total – and Dylan Strome (20:56) and Connor McMichael (20:02) also exceeding the 20-minute plateau. All three saw ice time in the overtime session.
Both sides battled hard for 65 minutes, and every square inch of ice was contested throughout. The lack of time and space was evident in the first frame, when the two sides combined for a grand total of six shots at 5-on-5, four for Washington and just two for Philadelphia, representing the Flyers’ total for the entire opening period.
The scoring stalemate was broken early in the second period. The Caps missed a couple of opportunities to exit their zone, and the Flyers’ Bobby Brink made them pay, chipping home a rebound of a Marc Staal point shot at 2:14 of the middle frame.
Washington answered right back on the next shift, getting a goal from its hottest and most consistent forward trio. Anthony Mantha carried down the right wing wall and deep into Philadelphia ice, shoveling a cross-ice backhand feed to space on the left side for a late arriving Aliaksei Protas. From the left half wall, Protas fired it right back in the opposite direction. The puck got caught up in traffic in front, where McMichael was able to pull it out and tuck it into the cage from the paint at the three-minute mark of the second.
The two sides traded extra-man opportunities thereafter, and it was Washington that jumped ahead with some excellent execution on a power play late in the second. T.J. Oshie pushed the puck down to Strome, who straddled the goal line on the right side of the net. Strome was able to finesse a feed through the paint to Tom Wilson at the back door post, and Wilson chipped a shot to the shelf for Washington’s first lead of the night, a 2-1 advantage at 15:29.
“Osh made a good read to go up in the shooter there,” recounts Strome. “And they obviously didn’t see that look, so the low guy was open. He faked the shot and just bumped it right down to me, and Tom made a good read to go back door.”
The Caps fell into some deep penalty soup just after that go-ahead goal. First, Joel Edmundson was boxed for tripping with just under two minutes remaining in the middle period. Just over a minute later, McMichael followed him to the sin bin – on what was a very iffy hooking call in the center of the ice – putting the Flyers on a 5-on-3 power play for 45 seconds, the first 38 of which came at the end of the second.
“The [penalty] kill was huge,” says Carbery. “I didn’t like the call on that, but we stuck to it and found a way to kill that situation off, and there were some other big penalty kills throughout that game.”
The Caps successfully navigated their way through that mess, only to have the Flyers pull even at even strength early in the third. As a group of players battled for possession of the puck behind the Washington net, Philly’s Joel Farabee pulled the puck out of the pile and abruptly scored on a wraparound, squaring the score at 2-2 at 5:25 of the third.
Washington regained the lead on a beauty of a forechecking goal from Strome. Wilson was the driver of the play, beating Flyers’ defenseman Cam York to the puck on a routine dump in. Wilson centered for Protas in the high slot, and Protas’ stick snapped, blunting his pass to Strome, which turned out to be a blessing. Strome tapped home his 12th of the season to make it 3-2 at 9:05.
Oshie scored for Washington in the shootout, but Philly got goals from Sean Couturier and Brink to run its record to 11-3-2 in its last 16 games.
The Caps were minutes away from getting two points and leaving Philly empty-handed, but Tippett’s late goal changed all the calculus, forcing the Caps to settle for a single while the Flyers reeled in a pair of points.
“It’s not what we’re hoping for, because we’ve got the lead,” laments Lindgren. “We’re up 3-2 with two minutes left, and they score the goal from just inside the blueline; it goes through someone’s legs right in front.
“Overall, I thought we played a good road hockey game. I really liked the way the guys played in front of me; I thought they played hard, played efficient, effective, and I thought it was a really good effort by our guys."
