Darcy Kuemper stopped all 24 shots sent his way on Tuesday night at Capital One Arena, helping the Caps to a 2-0 victory over the visiting Anaheim Ducks. The whitewash was Kuemper’s first of the season, and the 31st of his NHL career.
The 18 skaters in front of Kuemper defended diligently; they blocked nearly as many shots (23) as the veteran Caps’ netminder stopped himself. Half of the Ducks shots came in the third period when Anaheim – which has earned a third of its victories this season when trailing after 40 minutes of play – put forth a significant push to muster the equalizer in what was a one-goal game for much of the night.
“All the wins are so important right now,” says Kuemper. “I’m not really focused on the shutout, just a huge two points for us. And we’ve just got to keep rolling until the All-Star break here, because the standings are so tight.”
Ethan Bear’s first goal as a Capital came during a stretch of 4-on-4 hockey late in the first period, and Kuemper made certain that was all the offense the Caps would require. Tom Wilson scored into a vacated Anaheim cage in the game’s final minute, his 11th career goal against the Ducks in just 19 games.
“Fantastic, I thought he was great,” says Caps’ coach Spencer Carbery of Kuemper. “And a tough game [for him]; I looked up in the second period, and there was maybe nine shots. It’s a low volume. Those games sometimes get really tricky for goaltenders, because now you face one really good look, and you’ve only had eight shots in the game. So I thought he was very strong in a difficult game for him to play in.”
About the only thing the Caps did wrong in the game’s first 20 minutes was to get caught with too many players on the ice early in the frame, leading to an Anaheim power play. By the end of the period, Washington had a 1-0 lead and had dominated throughout.
With Washington’s Anthony Mantha and Anaheim’s Ryan Strome in the box for coincidental slashing minors late in the first, the Caps generated some motion in the offensive zone, and from the outside of the right circle, Caps’ defenseman Nick Jensen put a shot toward the net, where T.J. Oshie was parked. Oshie got a stick on it, but the puck bounced out to the slot where Bear collected it on his backhand. As Bear was going to his forehand, Ducks’ goalie John Gibson was desperately diving back into the crease, trying to occupy as much space as possible. But Bear was able to put it where Gibson was instead of where he was going, giving Washington a 1-0 lead with 37.8 seconds left in the first.
“Honestly, I just saw a lot of net and I just had to make sure I got it up,” recounts Bear. “And it happened so quick, and you’re not thinking, you’re just reacting. I just tried to get it in the open cage, and I got it there. The rest is history.”
“At 4-on-4, right away we knew we wanted to get some movement going, and cause a little confusion,” says Jensen of the Caps’ second 4-on-4 tally of the season. “So we did it at the blueline, and I saw Osh in front of the net, taking the goalie’s eyes away, and I just decided to deliver the puck. I knew Bearsie was going back door – I thought he’d be on his backhand, so I didn’t want to pass it to him. But you deliver pucks, and good things happen. So that’s what I did.”
The goal was Bear’s first as a member of the Capitals, and his first in a year and a day. His previous tally came with Vancouver, on Jan. 15, 2023 at Carolina.
“It feels really good,” he says. “You forget how that feeling feels. It’s definitely nice to get that out of the way, and now I can have fun and just not think about it.”
Aside from the goal, the best thing the Caps did was limit Anaheim to just three shots on net in the first period, with just one of those coming at 5-on-5. The Ducks had one shot on the power play and another during the same 4-on-4 stretch in which Bear scored. Anaheim went over 16 minutes without a shot at one point during the opening stanza.
Each team had an unsuccessful power play in the second period, and the Caps did well to weather the Ducks’ extra-man opportunity; Anaheim had the puck in Washington’s end for the entire two minutes, but it managed just one shot on net. Washington got blocks from both John Carlson and Nic Dowd on the kill, and it was able to nurse its 1-0 lead into the third period.
Anaheim – which played and won on Monday afternoon in Florida – seemed to catch a second wind in the third; the Ducks were more assertive in the final 20 minutes than in the first 40. But although the Caps defended more than they would have liked in the third, they did it with aplomb. Anaheim garnered few looks from the middle of the ice and was rarely presented with a second opportunity.
Kuemper’s best save of the night came late in the third against noted Caps killer Alex Killorn, who was denied on the doorstep by Kuemper’s left pad.
“It ricocheted off some bodies,” begins Kuemper, “and then I just kind of saw it out of the corner of my eye, and I stuck my leg out and I was able to get a piece of it.”
The stop on Killorn came with about two and half minutes remaining, and with Gibson on the bench for the extra attacker. Just over a minute later, Wilson salted the win away by lofting the puck into the empty net, giving the Caps their first victory by a multi-goal margin in over a month, since a 4-2 victory in Chicago on Dec. 10.
The Ducks are now 2-3-0 on their six-game road excursion, which concludes on Saturday in San Jose.
“We were off early,” says Anaheim coach Greg Cronin. “You could tell; it was an awkward trip in with the weather. And then I thought we started slow. We stayed pretty sound defensively; we didn’t give them too much, even though we weren’t really sharp with our passing or our execution. Gibson kept us in the game.”
