Seeking a strong response after an ugly 5-1 loss to the Bruins in Boston on Friday, the Caps got it, though it didn't happen right off the hop.
"We kind of rode out [Philadelphia's] best for the first 30 minutes," says Caps center Lars Eller. "We just stuck to our plan and kept playing our game, and all of a sudden things started opening up a little bit when we connected on some face-off plays and got some offensive-zone time."
Washington was slow out of the gates on Sunday night. By the time the Flyers' Joel Farabee scored the game's first goal at 11:04 of the first frame on a 2-on-1 rush, the Caps were being outshot 9-1. With the benefit of a power play late in the first, Washington began to close that gap some as the first period concluded.
Two nights after a subpar second was their undoing in Boston, the Caps put together a dominant middle period and it was just enough to put them on top before the buzzer. After they weathered a stretch of penalty killing in the middle of the period, they went to work in the Philly zone.
After taking the puck from Zdeno Chara, T.J. Oshie circled the perimeter of the Flyers' zone, going from dot to dot. Up near the Philly line, he shook Flyers forward Carson Bunnaman, getting him to commit and blow the zone, and giving the Caps a numbers advantage down low. As he curled down to the right dot, Oshie went cross-ice to Alex Ovechkin, who buried the feed to make it a 1-1 game at 15:11 of the second.
In the final half-minute of the second, the Flyers were deemed guilty of icing the puck. Evgeny Kuznetsov won a left dot draw back to the point, where Dmitry Orlov left it for Jakub Vrana before quietly creeping down toward the left dot. Vrana fed Carlson at the right point, and Carlson had a wide seam with which to send it back to Orlov, who scored from the bottom of the circle with 15.8 seconds left in the period. That goal gave the Caps a 2-1 lead, and it proved to be the game-winner.
"It was a missed assignment with their [defenseman] coming in back door, that we probably should have been able to pick up," recounts Flyers coach Alain Vigneault. "I think that was the game-changer. Instead of going in after two periods with a tie game, we're one behind."
Early in the third, Washington added a critical insurance strike. Oshie carried into the Philadelphia zone in a 3-on-3 situation, as Chara and a pair of Flyers forwards were entangled in front of the Philadelphia bench, leaving some extra space in the attack zone. Oshie left the puck for Nicklas Backstrom up high on the left side, and when the silky center hit the late arriving Nick Jensen at the Philadelphia line, the Caps essentially had a 4-on-3. Jensen wisely crept in from the point and fired from just inside the right circle, beating Carter Hart to make it a 3-1 game at 4:15 of the third.
"It started with Chara making a great defensive play on the blueline," says Jensen. "And then he took two guys out of the play with some physicality, and that allowed me to get up in the play. And then Backstrom is a playmaker; he makes plays and he hit me wide open, and I had all day to take a shot. It was exciting. It's been a while."
