From start to final horn, the Capitals turned in their strongest 60-minute performance on Friday night against the Minnesota Wild at Capital One Arena. The result was their fourth straight victory, a 5-1 triumph that was much closer than the final score would indicate for much of the night.
Dylan Strome struck for a pair of goals and he added an assist on Alex Ovechkin’s first goal of the season – and the 898th of the captain’s career – early in the third period. Washington’s defense again came to the fore on Friday, holding the Wild without an official shot on net for nearly a full period of hockey from midway through the first to the middle of the second. The Caps have yielded just three goals against at 5-on-5 in five games this season.
“We did a lot of good things, and we had a great start,” says Caps coach Spencer Carbery. “We did a lot of the things that we talked about doing, especially on this homestand against Western teams we don’t see a lot. It’s important to come out and set the tone right away in that first 20 minutes, and I thought we did exactly that. Kudos to our guys; it was a pretty complete performance tonight.”
As Carbery notes, the Caps turned in their best first period of the season on Friday night, killing off a penalty against the vaunted Minnesota power play and spending most of the frame stressing the Wild in its own end of the ice. Minnesota iced the puck half a dozen times to none for Washington in the game’s first 20 minutes.
Throughout the first, the Caps were efficient at exiting their end and moving the puck northward. Late in the frame, they went 200 feet to score the game’s first goal in that fashion.
John Carlson exited the zone, feeding Martin Fehervary in neutral ice. After gaining the red line, Fehervary sent Strome into Minnesota ice, and the latter bumped it to Ovechkin on the right side before going directly to the blue paint. Ovechkin then put it right on Strome’s tape for an easy redirect and a 1-0 Washington lead at 17:52.
“It obviously feels great to get on the board,” says Strome of scoring his first goal of the season. “I thought our [defense] did a great job of moving it up all night and catching them a bit in transition. I thought their [defensemen] backed off quite a bit, and we took advantage.
“Obviously a great pass by [Ovechkin]; I was just driving the net and he did the rest.”
After limiting the Wild to a mere three shots in the first frame, the Caps kept up the stinginess through the first half of the middle stanza as well. By the time Vladimir Taransenko finally tested Logan Thompson with a shot just ahead of the midpoint of the middle period, it marked Minnesota’s first shot in 19 minutes and 22 seconds of playing time.
All that defensive domination did nothing to help the Caps on the scoreboard. Justin Sourdif drew a double minor on Minny’s Jake Middleton for hi-sticking in the first minute of the second, and Nic Dowd drew a call later in the frame, too. Those six minutes with the extra man produced just two shots on net, neither of them threatening.
With less than five minutes remaining in the period, the Wild finally managed to cobble together an offensive zone shift, and old friend Marcus Johansson bit the hand that once fed him, firing a shot against the grain and beating Thompson to the far right corner of the cage at 16:47, with the fifth shot Minnesota had mustered to that point of the contest.
On the very next shift, the determined Caps got it right back. Washington broke into Minnesota ice, and Rasmus Sandin kept the puck in at the left point, handing it off to Tom Wilson, who pushed it down low on the left side for Aliaksei Protas. Looking to feed Connor McMichael at the back door, Protas saw the puck slide under defenseman Jonas Brodin and goaltender Filip Gustavsson, and into the net, restoring the Caps’ lead at 17:18, just 31 seconds after the Johansson goal.
“Sometimes you get lucky, and that’s what’s happening with me right now,” says Protas. “Sometimes a couple of good bounces, and great work from the whole five [guys] on the ice, from the team just being on the same page.
“We were struggling to find our offense the first couple of games. Now, I think we’re getting it back, and long way to go but I think we started to find our offensive touch, which was good to see.”
The Caps definitely found their offensive touch in the third when they broke out for three goals to salt the game away.
Despite dominating the Wild for the game’s first 40 minutes, the Caps carried a precarious one-goal cushion into the third. But in the second minute of the final frame, Ovechkin’s first goal created some needed breathing room.
On a right dot draw in Minnesota’s end, Strome bested Ryan Hartman, pulling the puck to Ovechkin in the pocket. The captain snapped a shot off the left post and in, with just one second elapsing in the process.
“Obviously we try that play quite often, and when it works, it looks great,” says Strome. “It doesn’t always work, but it was right in the wheelhouse and a little lucky, but a great shot by O.”
Shortly after the midpoint of the third, Strome struck again, with the help of Anthony Beauvillier, who won a puck race and fired a seed to the front for Strome. Gustavsson stopped his first shot, but Strome retrieved the rebound and ripped it into a yawning cage for a 4-1 lead at 11:32.
On a late Washington power play, Tom Wilson scored his second extra-man tally in as many games, tipping home Carlson’s center point shot with 1:57 left.
Minnesota was held without a power-play goal for the first time in five games on the young season. The Wild now heads to Philadelphia to face the Flyers on Saturday night in the middle match of a five-game road trip. Minnesota has been outscored by a combined 10-3 in the first two games of the journey.
“Overall, in general, I thought they deserved to win,” says Wild coach John Hynes of the Capitals. “I thought they were more competitive on the puck in those areas [around the net] and all over the ice. We weren’t at a level – I would say from a speed perspective and a competitive perspective – to give ourselves a chance to win tonight.”
Friday’s win was the Caps’ first regulation win over the Wild in over five years, since a 4-3 victory in St. Paul on March 1, 2020.
