Thursday night was a night of happy returns for the Capitals. Hosting the Nashville Predators in the final game before the Olympic break, the Caps pushed past the Preds 4-2 on the strength of a couple of Jakob Chychrun goals.
But every bit as important as the result were the twin returns of center P-L Dubois and goaltender Logan Thompson. After missing more than three months of action, Dubois returned to the lineup and had a strong game, picking up a primary helper and a power-play goal in the first period. And Thompson had a top-notch performance against a desperate Nashville team, thwarting many high danger opportunities to record his 19th win of the season with a 27-save outing.
Thompson was making his first start in nine nights after missing four games with an upper body injury.
“We needed the result tonight heading into the Olympic break for a plethora of reasons,” says Caps coach Spencer Carbery. “One at the top being just needing the two points with where things are at, and then I think just for our group, morale wise, going into the break on a positive note, I think was important.
“Getting Dubie back into the lineup and him having a successful evening, I thought that was important. [Thompson] coming back, probably as good a performance in the net as we've had all season long. He was fantastic tonight, right from the start, made so many big saves in that game. And I'll be honest with you; we weren’t very good. So, without that performance, we are not getting two points tonight.”
Washington hopped out to an early 1-0 lead in the first. After Chychrun’s shot try at an open net fell flat, he recovered the puck and took it behind the Nashville cage, searching for an option. Spotting Tom Wilson out by the Nashville line, Chychrun got it to him, via a helpful deflection from Dubois. Then – with Aliaksei Protas blocking out the sun in front of Nashville netminder Justus Annunen – Wilson whipped a wrist shot high to the glove side at 4:15 of the first.
The Caps doubled their lead in the back half of the first, doing so just six seconds before the expiration of the game’s first power play.
John Carlson left the puck for Dylan Strome in Washington ice as the Caps regrouped for one last rush with the extra man. Strome carried up the left side and into Nashville ice, and running into some yellow-and-white sweatered traffic as he did. Dubois alertly followed closely behind, and when two Preds closed on Strome and threatened to strip him of the disc, Dubois got his long twig in there first. He pulled, dragged and shot it in a single motion, beating Annunen high on the short side to make it 2-0 at 12:48.
Carlson departed the game with a lower body injury late in the first and did not return; he was limited to 7:03 in ice time on the night. Chychrun helped pick up the slack; he logged a single-game season high of 28:59.
Carbery said he doesn’t believe Carlson’s injury is serious.
“Not overly [concerned],” says Carbery. “We have such a long break here that I think he’ll be fine. I haven’t got an update yet though, but I’m assuming it’s not long-term.”
Thompson was sharp when needed in the first frame. He stopped Michael Bunting twice on the same sequence – on the initial shot and the rebound – and then thwarted both Ryan O’Reilly and Jonathan Marchessault from the slot, all in between Washington’s two first-period goals.
Thompson made the save of the game in the front half of the second period, denying Marchessault on a 2-on-none rush with Erik Haula. The two Preds passed it back and forth until Marchessault took a rip at it from point blank range, and Thompson got just enough of it with his glove to keep it out.
“I think it was Haula, and I knew [ex-Vegas teammate] Marchy was going to be cocked, [after] playing with him,” recounts Thompson. “And it’s fun to stop him; I had a feeling they were going to go back to Marchy, and luckily it stayed out. Fun to stop that guy.”
Minutes later, the Nic Dowd line authored a textbook second-period table-setting shift, hemming the Preds in their end and getting a change. While Nashville was finally getting new personnel on the ice, Chychrun spun off a check in neutral ice, carried a punted puck back into the Preds’ zone and fired a shot past Annunen for his 20th goal of the season at 8:42, pushing the lead to 3-0.
“We had a lot of good [offensive] zone shifts, hemming them in,” says Chychrun. “And, yeah, Dowder’s been playing really good hockey for us the last few, just kind of leading us, and dragging us into the fight.”
With that goal, Chychrun became just the second Washington defenseman to put together back-to-back 20-goal seasons, joining Hockey Hall of Famer Larry Murphy (1985-86 and 1986-87) in that unique distinction.
With just under six minutes left in the second, Thompson made a pair of rapid fire stops on slot shots, first on Tyson Jost and then on Reid Schaefer.
Late in the middle period, the Preds cut into the Caps’ cushion when Adam Wilsby’s left point floater caught some traffic in front and bounded in off Marchessault’s skate to make it a 3-1 game at 17:40.
It appeared that Dowd restored Washington’s three-goal cushion with a laser of a shot off the rush, but the Preds took that one off the board with a successful coach’s challenge.
Not only that, Nashville’s Michael McCarron scored on the very next shift – at 1:17 of the third – to make it a 3-2 game, making for a two-goal swing early in the third.
The Preds put some offensive zone heat on the Caps in the third, but Thompson kept the door closed. And when Marchessault was guilty of slashing Dowd away from the play in the back half of the third, the Caps and Chychrun quickly made them pay for that unwise infraction.
Strome won a right dot draw to Alex Ovechkin, who put it back to Chychrun at the right point. After an exchange with Strome, Chychrun walked the line and crept down to the high slot where he unleashed another wrist rocket that beat Annunen, a mere eight seconds after Marchessault began to warm the seat in the penalty box.
Washington’s power play went 2-for-6 on the night, and the second one was the kind of goal the Caps have been seeking from that unit all season, one that shifted momentum in a close game.
Although the Preds had them on the ropes more than they would have liked, the Caps got the two points they badly needed, and they’ll head into the Olympic break with four wins in their last five games (4-1-0), and with Dubois and Thompson both feeling good about their returns.
Dubois had missed the last 47 games consecutively, the longest injury related absence of his NHL career.
“I was, I wouldn't say, nervous, but I was watching Dubie early, because you just don't know,” says Carbery. “When you miss that much time and then you put him with Pro and Willie, and then you're putting them out there against [Filip] Forsberg, the [Roman] Josi matchup. It was first the [Ryan] O'Reilly matchup. Then we sort of flipped halfway through the game when they started to deploy some lines a little bit differently.
“So you're looking [at him] early in the game: Does he look the same? [Are] his reads good? Is he moving well? How are his puck touches? And I thought he was excellent right from the start. And so that was encouraging right away to feel comfortable being able to just deploy Dubie like you would any other game. And we've talked at length about how much he means to our team and the role that he plays, and all the different things that he brings, and how important it is to our group. So, it was a huge boost to have him back in.”
It was a boost for Dubois as well; he can take comfort over the break knowing that he was able to make a strong return from a long absence.
“There was a few times where I thought I might throw up,” says Dubois. “But all in all, it was pretty good. I've said this a lot, the training staff, the strength coaches and everybody just did such a fantastic job at helping me, putting me in a position to succeed since the start of this process, and I'm beyond grateful for all of them. Game shape is not easy to get, but they did a really good job at putting me in the best position possible.”
Nashville played at home and traveled on Wednesday night, but the Preds had plenty of energy and legs on Thursday night, and they gave the Caps all they could handle.
“I thought on the back end of a back-to-back with a late night, I really liked our game,” says Preds coach Andrew Brunette. “We put ourselves in a good position. Unfortunately, we took a penalty late to get us out of that, especially on a night when you don’t have a whole lot of gas.
“But I’m really proud of the way the guys competed. We’ve been on a run here where we don’t give up and we keep coming back, and tonight was another example of that.”
