Regular season hockey returned to F St. on Wednesday night after a too long absence, and Washington’s home opener had a big beginning and a happy ending. After Alex Ovechkin’s sons combined to introduce him before his 22nd and final home opener, the Caps grabbed an early lead and never trailed, pushing past the Pittsburgh Penguins by a 5-3 count.
“It was a pretty cool moment,” says Ovechkin of having his boys – Sergei and Ilya – introduce their dad to a roaring crowd, the last of the Caps to be introduced ahead of the home opener. “Huge crowd and the kids announce my name. It was a special moment.”
After Anthony Beauvillier started the scoring less than half a minute into the contest, each member of the Pierre-Luc Dubois line – Dubois, Tom Wilson and Alex Tuch – scored the Caps’ middle three goals, and Ryan Leonard’s power-play goal in the third period gave Washington and Logan Thompson (27 saves) some breathing room.
The Dubois line put together a beastly performance, shutting down the Sidney Crosby line and hanging a minus-four on the Pittsburgh captain. The Dubois trio forechecked relentlessly and created a raft of chances in the offensive zone, and it took away time and space in the defensive end.
“I think we’re starting to find our groove a little bit,” says Wilson of his line’s dominant night. “I don’t know how much Tuchie has played his offside, so getting a little more familiar with that, just using our size, using our speed. I thought we made good plays and put ourselves in opportunities to take advantage when they made mistakes.”
It took less than 30 seconds of game action to lift the fans out of their seats. Dylan Strome alertly spotted Beauvillier blazing through the middle of the neutral zone with a burst of speed, and the silky Caps center hit his linemate in stride, sending him in on a breakaway. Beauvillier bit the hand that once fed him, shoveling a backhander over the glove hand of Pens goalie Arturs Silovs just 23 seconds after opening puck drop.
Less than a minute later, Pittsburgh pulled even on its own first shot of the night. Veteran winger Bryan Rust slipped a shot through on the short side for his first goal of the season on his first shift of the season – he was activated from IR before the game – tying the game at 1:19.
Rust’s goal turned out to be the only shot on net from a Pittsburgh forward in the first frame; the Pens’ other three shots in the first came from blueliners and from distance.
Washington had a glorious opportunity to regain the lead when it had overlapping power plays in the front half of the first, resulting in a 5-on-3 advantage of 44 seconds in duration. The Caps were able to threaten – they fired three shots on Silovs with the extra man/men – but they didn’t regain the lead until just after the midpoint of the period.
As his shift was ending, Alex Tuch thwacked the puck off the blade of Pens’ defenseman Kris Letang, and it rolled behind the Pittsburgh net, where Dubois collected it, and threaded a sublime backhand feed to the front for Tom Wilson, who was all alone in the slot. Wilson fired it to the twine at 11:51, putting the Caps back on top.
Early in the second period, Wilson returned the favor, sending a feed to the front from below the goal line to Dubois’ tape. Silovs was guilty of a mishandle and a turnover behind his net on the play, and Dubois had a yawning cage at which to shoot. His goal made it 3-1 for the Caps at 4:42.
In the back half of the middle period, as Pittsburgh was pressing the Caps in Washington ice, too many Pens ended up on the wrong side of the puck, and Wilson and Tuch took off together on a 2-on-none. The former fed the latter, and Tuch slammed home his third goal of the young season to lift the Caps to a three-goal lead, 4-1 at 13:14.
But the Pens kept pushing the pace, and when Thomas Novak netted the rebound of an Evgeni Malkin shot off the post at 14:05, the Pens were back within a pair.
At 18:01 of the second, Nick Robertson tightened the game further, tipping home a Kaeden Korczak point shot to make it 4-3.
And when Jakob Chychrun was boxed for holding Robertson less than a minute later, the Pens had a golden opportunity to draw even. Thompson denied late second-period bids from Rickard Rakell and Novak on the Pittsburgh power play, and the Caps killed off the carryover portion of the advantage at the start of the third.
After Beauvillier drew a hooking call on old friend Trevor van Riemsdyk early in the third, Washington went back on the power play with a chance to expand its slim. It took most of the power play to get it done, by Jordan Kyrou executed a quick and smooth neutral zone regroup and fed Leonard, whose shot from the inside of the right circle beat Silovs to close out the scoring at 3:55.
On a subsequent Caps power play in the middle of the third, the Caps needed Thompson to make a denial on a Rust breakaway, and they needed another stop from him when Blake Lizotte exited the box and skated in on another breakaway. Thompson thwarted them both, running his record to 2-0-0 on the season, and improving to 19-5-0 for his career in the month of October.
With just under four minutes remaining, Pittsburgh pulled Silovs for an extra attacker, and the Pens kept the heat on Washington for much of those four minutes, but Thompson and the penalty killers shut the door and the Caps won their second game against a Metro Division opponent in as many tries.
Wilson, Dubois and Tuch – in that order – were the game’s three stars.
“I thought they were outstanding tonight, right from their first shift,” says Caps coach Spencer Carbery. “Obviously, Strome, O and Beauvillier get us going early and bring the building alive. But Dubie’s line was so good tonight with Tuchie and Willie.
“They did such a good job of creating turnovers on the forecheck, putting their [defensemen] under pressure, holding on to pucks, had multiple long [offensive] zone shifts, and it was against [Crosby]. Anytime you can do those things consistently and win that matchup, it’s a huge benefit for our team.”
“I think it’s on the puck carrier, but it’s also on the support, working to be good options at times,” says Pens coach Dan Muse of his team and its penchant for turning pucks over in Wednesday’s game. “I think each one of them has been different; there are times when we’re vacating [the zone] too early or we’re not providing the support that’s necessary, and when you don’t have options, that’s what’s going to happen.”
