More than anything else, the Capitals simply needed two points from Tuesday’s game against the New Jersey Devils at Capital One Arena. That achievement was unlocked in fine fashion with a 6-2 victory over the visitors, but in diligently defending the high-octane attack of the Devils while erupting for a six-pack of lamplighters, the Caps are hopeful that Tuesday’s victory might lead to more.
Connor McMichael and Alex Ovechkin scored twice each, and Dylan Strome and Mike Sgarbossa also found the back of the net in a game that was tight and close through the first two periods. The Caps nursed a 2-1 lead to the second intermission, but they turned on the jets in the third, striking for four goals in a period for the third time this season.
“I thought they delivered in a big way in those last 20 minutes,” says Caps’ coach Spencer Carbery. “Because I didn’t feel like the way that game was going, if we tried to hang on and sit back, that was not going to end well. We had a couple of lines going, but it wasn’t the whole group for the first two periods, and we’re hanging on. [Goaltender Charlie Lindgren] was doing a great job.”
Tuesday’s victory gives Washington a modest two-game winning streak for the first time in over a month, and for just the second time since the turn of the calendar. The win was the Caps’ first by a margin of four or more goals in just over two months, since a 4-0 victory over the Rangers here on Dec. 9.
“Tonight was a very important game for us,” says Ovechkin, whose career goal total climbed to 838 by virtue of his second two-goal game of the season. “It was a four-point game, and everybody knows that. We have a great start, and Mikey’s line did a good job out there, and Chucky was unbelievable today.”
Needing a good start, the Caps got one. They took a 1-0 lead on the first shift of the game when McMichael buried the rebound of an Aliaksei Protas shot just 39 seconds after the game’s opening puck drop.
New Jersey evened the score late in the first when Simon Nemec made a nifty play along the left wing wall and threaded a feed to Alexander Holtz for a tap in at the back door at 15:03.
McMichael’s second marker was a true beauty, and it restored the Washington lead early in the second. First, he wrested the puck away from Devils’ forward Tomas Nosek high in the New Jersey zone, then toe-dragged both Nosek and Nemec on his way to the net. Just when it appeared that he might have run himself out of room, McMichael neatly tucked the puck around the right post and in, just ahead of the outstretched glove of New Jersey netminder Nico Daws.
“I saw the goalie a little far out of his crease,” recounts McMichael, glossing over the double to-drag that got him to that point. “I kind of just faked the shot and went around him, and it just barely got over the line. It was good to see that one go in.”
McMichael’s second goal of the game put the Caps back on top at 4:17 of the middle frame, and it was all they could do to keep the Devils off the board for the rest of the period. New Jersey had a pair of power plays in the second, and – with penalty-killing pivot Nic Dowd lost for the remainder of the game because of an upper body injury sustained in the first period – Washington did much more surviving than thriving during those penalty kills, and indeed, during the middle stanza as a whole. Charlie Lindgren made 17 of his 37 saves in the second to protect the slimmest of leads.
Clinging to a 2-1 advantage with 20 minutes remaining in a game they had to have, Carbery challenged his charges to salt the game away in the third, and they managed to do exactly that.
“[Carbery] came in at the second intermission, and he said, ‘We can’t just hand around. We’ve got to go in and put our foot on their neck, pretty much, and I thought we did that,” recounts Lindgren.
Starting with Strome’s crucial insurance goal at 4:10 of the third, the Capitals scored three goals in a span of 8 minutes and 17 seconds, and they needed only six shots to suddenly stretch their lead to 5-1. Ovechkin scored three seconds after an offensive-zone draw, threading a shot through traffic to beat Daws on the short side. When Sgarbossa bagged his first NHL goal since Dec. 17, 2021 at 12:27, the Caps were up by four goals, despite not having a power play to that point of the contest.
Devils’ center Erik Haula scored on a bar-down backhander at 15:34, but Ovechkin answered on the power play in the game’s final minute. It marked the second time in as many games that the Caps scored on their lone extra-man opportunity of the evening, and they’ve now scored with the extra man in five of their last six games, despite totaling only 13 power play opportunities over that span.
Three nights after scoring six goals on 40 shots against Philadelphia, New Jersey pumped 39 pucks at Lindgren, but could only beat him twice.
“Well, we didn’t finish, obviously,” says Devils’ coach Lindy Ruff. “Our second power play, I thought we had a lot of really good looks. We just didn’t put the puck in the back of the net.”
You can’t win two until you win one, and you can’t win three until you win two. The Caps have finally strung together consecutive wins, but they know they can’t rest on their laurels. Their only hope to clamber their way back into the playoff picture is to stack multiple wins together, and they depart on Wednesday for a two-game tour of Florida, facing the Lightning on Thursday and the Panthers on Saturday.
The Caps have two wins in their pocket. They’re 3-1-1 in their last five, and they’ve been playing well against a generally high caliber of opposition. They should at least be able to pack some confidence for Wednesday’s flight to Florida.
“We’re fighting for our life, obviously,” says Strome. “We’re playing some decent hockey after the break. Obviously, the first couple games didn’t go as well, but we were playing better than we were before the break. You look at the positives, and try to build on those.
“Tampa and Florida are two great teams, so we’re going to have to play really good hockey, we’re going to need good goaltending, we’re going to need good from all over … We’ll see what happens, but it’s going to be two tough games. It’s playoff hockey right now.”
