Until Jakob Chychrun scored the game-winning goal in the second minute of overtime, the Caps never led in Tuesday’s tilt with the Tampa Bay Lightning. The Caps fell down a goal early during a rather flat first-period performance, but Logan Thompson kept the Lightning within reach until Tom Wilson stepped up and lit a fire under his teammates, and that flame kept burning until the Caps skated off with a 3-2 victory.
Not only did Wilson lead the charge with his physicality, he had a hand in all three Washington goals, tying the game in the third period with the Caps’ first power-play goal of the season, and assisting on each of the others. Fittingly, he recorded his 400th career point on Chychrun’s overtime game-winner, becoming the 19th player in franchise history to achieve the feat.
The Caps won the draw to start overtime and they went right into Tampa Bay ice and began putting heat on the Lightning and goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy. Dylan Strome hit the left post. Vasilevskiy stopped John Carlson, who also had a couple of bids blocked. Aliaksei Protas missed wide, but the Caps had the Bolts on the ropes, and they made sure they kept them there.
As the Caps regrouped in neutral ice, Wilson roared back into the zone down the right side, carrying around the back of the cage as Chychrun found a quiet area just off the right post. As he curled around the far side of the net, Wilson rifled a feed to Chychrun’s tape, and the blueliner banged it home at 1:19 of the extra session.
“I think we did a really good job; it was textbook,” recounts Wilson of the game-winner. “We started with the puck, didn’t let them get it. Their best players got stuck on the ice defending, and we had a great change and came on with fresh legs, which is half the battle.
“It’s one of those plays where you see a guy in a good spot and just try to take advantage of it, and Chychy made a great play to bang it in.”
“I just tried to support him on the entry,” says Chychrun. “I noticed my guy was snoozing a little bit, and just tried to go back post, and he hit me with a heck of a pass.”
Chychrun’s game-winner is his seventh in a Washington sweater; he leads all NHL defensemen in that department since the start of last season.
“I felt like Willie was outstanding tonight,” says Caps coach Spencer Carbery. “And credit to him, because our first period was not good at all. We didn't have a lot of life, couldn’t make a play, but also – aside from the puck play – we were just not engaged in the game. Guys were turning away; there was no contact.
“And I felt like he was a big reason why [the team responded], dragging everybody into the fight tonight and setting the tone himself with saying, ‘We're not just going to go quietly.’ In true fashion, our team show a lot of resolve.”
Tampa Bay scored the first goal of the game on a set face-off play just four seconds after the game’s first television timeout.
On a left dot draw in the offensive zone, Anthony Cirelli pulled the disc back to Ryan McDonagh at the left point, while Jake Guentzel drifted from the half wall directly the slot. McDonagh fed him perfectly upon arrival there, and Guentzel chipped it home for a 1-0 Tampa Bay lead at 7:06 of the opening period.
Thompson made a number of big stops to keep his team within reach in the first. He made an excellent glove snare on Bolts blueliner J.J. Moser less than a minute after the Guentzel goal, then followed with stops on Brandon Hagel from the slot and and a denial of Guentzel from the top of the paint late in the frame.
In the final minute of the first, Tampa Bay’s Andrei Vasilevskiy made his best stop of the stanza, thwarting Justin Sourdif’s semi-breakaway.
Late in the second, the Caps drew even on a brilliant read and feed from Connor McMichael. As the Lightning were pressuring the Caps in their end, Carlson made a defensive stop as Cirelli tried to send Guentzel in alone. Wilson collected it and lofted it deep; McMichael read the trajectory instantly and got on his horse, galloping deep into Tampa ice to negate a possible icing. As Protas followed, McMichael put a sublime feed to the front – through the wickets of a Tampa Bay defender – and Protas pounded it in to tie the game at 17:38 of the second.
“That’s a big play,” says Protas. “It started from the breakout, all five guys, everyone did a great job. And Mikey, I mean, that’s a big play, obviously. He’s a great player.”
With four seconds remaining on a carryover power play early in the third, the Bolts regained the lead when Brayden Point scored on a drive-by deflection of a well-placed Victor Hedman shot at 1:23.
After Ryan Leonard drew a cross-checking call on Tampa Bay defenseman Emil Lilleberg, the Caps went to work with the extra man. As Wilson worked to create some space between himself and Hedman in the slot, Dylan Strome put just the right amount of air under a shot, and Wilson deftly deflected it inside the left post to square the score at 2-2 at 4:56 of the third.
In the final minute of regulation, Alex Ovechkin made a nifty feed to Chychrun on the rush, and the latter hammered a one-timer that knocked the stick out of Vasilevskiy’s hand, but that stop ultimately earned the Lightning a point.
Both teams scored a power-play goal on a deflection, and both teams scored a 5-on-5 goal with smart, heady hockey plays. The difference in this one was Wilson, and Washington’s assertiveness in the overtime session.
“That’s textbook, of how you would like to set up an OT,” says Carbery. “Win the opening draw, and then what’s key is we generate a few – let’s call them attack – shot attempts, pass through, and we get the puck back. If you get a few retrievals, now you’ve got a group of three defenders that are a little bit fatigued, and now you can start to try to out-change them.
“And when you talk about overtime principles, that's right at the top. Win the face-off, out-change your opponent, and that's we're able to do.”
Playing for the second time in as many days, the Lightning was able to grab three points from a set of back-to-backs on the road, this after dropping each of its first two games on home ice.
“Listen, we gave ourselves a chance to win,” says Lightning coach Jon Cooper. “And for a large portion of this game, I really like the way we played. It’s just tough, because you can make mistakes in games, and make more mistakes than we did tonight and win games, and sometimes you make a couple, and it doesn’t go your way.
“But we got better as a team this entire trip. Ultimately, we played a back-to-back, we got three out of four points. If we did that all year, I’d be loving it.”
