With the trade deadline a week away and their season hanging from a thread, the Caps turned in a rugged first 20 minutes on Friday night at Capital One Arena against the Philadelphia Flyers, the team they’re trying to chase down in the Metropolitan Division standings. Washington dug itself an early two-goal hole, but if this had been a poker game, one might say the Caps slow-played the Flyers.
Beginning with an Alex Ovechkin goal early in the second period, the Caps scored five unanswered goals to pull the crowd into the game and claim a 5-2 victory over Philly, the only Metro team they had yet to defeat this season. Friday’s victory pulls the Caps to within four points of the Flyers; Washington also holds two games in hand on Philly, and the two teams meet once more this season, in the ’23-24 season finale in Philadelphia on April 16.
Ovechkin’s goal was the first of three for the Caps in the middle period. Down two after one, the Caps entered the third up a goal, when they put two more on the board to salt the game away.
“We talked [Thursday] about where we are at, and the significance and importance of this game against the team that we’re trying to catch,” says Caps’ coach Spencer Carbery. “We’re running out of runway here, wo we knew that this was – I don’t want to say ‘do or die,’ but – as close as you can get to it.
“This is as close as you can get to, ‘We need this one, or we’re in some trouble.’ And I give our guys a ton of credit, because that first period, you’re like, ‘Are we going to go quietly into the night?’”
Although the start was not what Washington was seeking in a game of such magnitude, the Caps stuck with it through a sleepy first 20 minutes. Philly struck early, taking a 1-0 lead at 1:52 on a Bobby Brink follow-up after Caps’ goalie Charlie Lindgren made a dazzling save on Morgan Frost’s initial opportunity.
The Caps had difficulty stringing together passes, mounting a forecheck or establishing any sort of sustained offense. They killed off an early Philadelphia power play, but the deficit got a goal deeper when Philly’s Owen Tippet struck on a wrist shot from the left circle on the Flyers’ second power play of the evening at 18:23 of the first.
That was the high point of the evening for the Flyers.
Ovechkin’s goal came two seconds after Hendrix Lapierre won a left dot draw in the offensive zone, pulling the puck to the pocket for Ovechkin, who wristed it home – with a touch of help from linemate Tom Wilson – at 4:34 of the second.
“With these two guys, just win your faceoffs, and good things will happen,” says Lapierre. “If there’s one guy who can score from the hash marks outside the dots, it’s Ovi.”
It was an opportune moment for the Caps’ captain’s 839th career goal, and it opened the floodgates for the Washington offense, which had been quiet to that point.
“We flipped the game completely in that second period, and got some life,” says Carbery. “And [Ovechkin] deserves a lot of credit, because we need a play. You can turn momentum, and you can start to generate positive shifts, and get in the offensive zone, and generate some chances. But at some point, you need someone that’s going to make a play and get you on the board, and that’s exactly what he did off that draw; he rips it into the net.”
That got the Caps started. Just ahead of the midpoint of the middle period, Sonny Milano tied the game at 2-2, chipping a humpbacked wrist shot over the left shoulder of Philly netminder Samuel Ersson, seconds after Ersson denied Max Pacioretty’s breakaway bid. For Milano, it was his third goal in his last five games.
Late in the second, Ovechkin’s patience started a scoring play that wound up as the game-winner. From center point, Ovechkin wound up as if to hammer one toward the net, but thought better of it when he saw the line of traffic between himself and the cage. He wisely opted to dish to Rasmus Sandin on his left, and the latter let a shot fly, a drive that Lapierre got a stick on. John Carlson collected the puck and swerved around the far side of the cage, finishing a rare wraparound goal from a defenseman and giving the Caps a 3-2 lead at 17:45, their first scoreboard advantage of the night.
As expected, Philly pushed hard early in the third. On one of the Flyers’ offensive-zone forays, Philly defender Sean Walker got a stick up in the grill of Caps’ winger Nicolas Aubé-Kubel, putting the Caps on the power play for just the second time in the game. Twenty-five seconds later, Dylan Strome issued a perfect feed from behind the net to Anthony Mantha in front. Mantha scored a power-play goal to give the Caps some needed breathing room, a 4-2 lead at 6:04.
Lindgren kept the Flyers at bay over the final 40-plus minutes, making one of his best stops of the night on Sean Couturier with just under five minutes remaining. Seconds later, Strome struck for his 22nd goal of the year, closing out the scoring and icing a critical victory for the Capitals.
With his 13th victory of the season, Lindgren matched his single-season career high, established last season. Lindgren and the Caps rebounded from an 8-3 loss in Detroit on Tuesday, and he was the guy the Caps wanted in net for this crucial contest, regardless of the outcome of that game in Motown.
“I was so excited to play this game, just because of last game and what happened with the snowman,” says Lindgren, referring to the eight goals against. “It meant a lot, honestly. It just shows they’ve got a lot of trust in me, and I wanted to go out and make the most of it tonight.
Philly has a quick turnaround; Friday’s game was the front end of a set of back-to-backs for the Flyers. They host Ottawa on Saturday night in the City of Brotherly Love.
“They get some momentum off their face-off goal,” says Flyers’ coach John Tortorella, referring to Ovechkin’s goal. “I think they start checking a little bit better. After the first period, the second and third periods, I just don’t think we developed a whole lot offensively.”
The Caps will conduct a midday practice on Saturday, and then they’ll get ready to host the Arizona Coyotes in the finale of a quick two-game homestand on Sunday afternoon.
“We’re still in the fight, and we’re going to continue to grind,” says Carbery. “And I know the character inside of our locker room; Sunday will be no different. As some people might say, it might not be a Picasso, but we’re going to fight and we’re going to grind, and we’re going to try to find a way to win another game and stay in this thing.”
