Sometimes, the best defense is a good offense. The Caps put that maxim to good effect on Saturday afternoon against the visiting New Jersey Devils at Capital One Arena. Facing the swift and skilled Devils is no picnic for any team, let alone a team like the Capitals, which was missing two top six defensemen and two of their best defensive centers.
In Saturday’s Metro Division matinee, the Caps stifled New Jersey at even strength and their three healthy centers all scored in the second period, lifting Washington to a 4-2 victory.
Logan Thompson made 29 saves – including 16 in the third period – to improve to 4-2-0 on the season. Eleven different players found their way onto the scoresheet for Washington in the win.
“I think all four lines, all six [defensemen] were on the same page,” says Caps defenseman Vincent Desharnais, the only Washington skater with multiple points (two assists). “Trying to keep them on the outside, try to slow them down as much as we could. And when there was any breakdowns, LT was there to make the big saves. So, it's a great team win, and if we can just keep building on top of that, it's a good team out there. And I think we played really well.”
Desharnais recorded the third two-point game of his NHL career, and his first since March 30, 2024 when he was a member of the Edmonton Oilers.
“Definitely for the first 40 minutes played our game, just staying on top of them,” says Thompson. “I think that's our recipe for success. And I think when we do that, we can hang with anyone. And I thought through 40, we really controlled the play and it showed on the scoreboard. And I think it showed; they didn't have much in our zone.
“So, I think that's the recipe for success for us. We’ve got to you know keep picking away at it. And we are a younger team still, but we're getting there.”
Washington had a couple of odd man rushes in the early minutes of Saturday’s game, and the Devils got a couple of early saves from Jake Allen to deny Ryan Leonard on a 2-on-1 and Alex Tuch on a 2-on-none.
The Caps got in some penalty trouble in the first, taking two penalties in the front half of the first frame, neither of them in the defensive zone. Although Washington officially killed both of them, New Jersey’s Arseny Gritsyuk scored on a screen shot from the left half wall one second after the expiration of the second of those man advantage opportunities, lifting the Devils to a 1-0 lead at 10:04 of the opening period.
Late in the first, the Caps answered back on a dazzling highlight reel goal from Leonard on Washington’s second power play of the contest. After taking the puck from Jakub Chychrun in a face-off circle in his own end of the rink, Leonard turned on the jets and burned his way through the middle of the ice. After beating the last of the four Devils, Leonard deked Allen to open up enough space to tap it home from the top of the paint, squaring the score at 16:42.
“When you’re trailing in a game and you’re playing well, you need something,” says Caps coach Spencer Carbery. “And he makes a huge play and basically brings the building to life and brings our bench to life. And that snowballs to grabbing that momentum and taking it into the intermission, and then taking over the game in the second.”
Washington opened up a multi-goal advantage with a stellar second period. In the second minute of the middle frame, Alex Ovechkin set up Ilya Protas’ first goal of the season on the rush, pushing the Caps ahead of New Jersey at 1:16.
Just over three minutes later, the Caps went up by two on Dylan Strome’s first goal of the season. This one came on some sharp passing in the zone; all five Caps touched the puck within a span of seconds before Strome made it a 3-1 game with a backhander from in tight at 4:36.
Soon after the midpoint of the middle period, the Caps hit the trifecta on second period goals from the middle of the ice. After the Devils were guilty of icing the puck, Boone Jenner won a left dot draw in the offensive zone, pulling it back to Martin Fehervary at the left point. As Jenner headed to the net, Fehervary slid the puck across to Vincent Desharnais at the right point. Desharnais put a shot on net, and Jenner was on the spot to bury the rebound for a 4-1 lead at 11:14.
“They're good players,” says Ilya Protas of the Caps’ missing middlemen. “And yeah, we have to step up as centermen of all four lines. If we're talking about the four of us, obviously a big part of our game is face-offs. And talking about myself, I was looking and learning from all four all four guys on the position, and trying to get lessons from everyone, and just to be consistent in that exact play, and be good in the face-offs, all in all three zones. And that I feel like one of the best games today and through whole start of the year.
“And if we're talking about the whole game, I feel like we've been pretty good, and guys shut some plays down, [scored] some goals, and [made] good plays overall.”
In the third, the Caps bent but they didn’t break until late, when New Jersey broke through on its second power play of the period, getting an extra-man marker from Timo Meier in the game’s final half minute to account for the 4-1 final.
The Caps have faced four different Metro Division foes in the early weeks of the season, and they’ve vanquished all four. Today, they humbled a New Jersey team that boat-raced the New York Rangers by a 7-1 count on Thursday night.
“Our checking habits and our puck battles lost, all those things just added up to easy goals,” says Devils coach Sheldon Keefe.
“I don’t know if we won a puck battle the entire second period. We didn’t physically get anybody stopped; we weren’t in anybody’s way.
“All the things that we did really well against the Rangers in terms of being tight and giving them a whole lot of nothing, that didn’t hold up here today against this team.”
