From the very first shift of the night, it was apparent that Wednesday night wasn’t the Caps’ night, but it was Auston Matthews’ night. The Toronto sniper gave his team a 1-0 lead just 16 seconds into the game, and Matthews went on to record the second five-point game (two goals, three assists) of his NHL career as the Maple Leafs rolled over the Caps by a 7-3 count on Wednesday night at Capital One Arena.
Coming off a 4-3 loss in Philadelphia the previous night, the Leafs came to town saddled with their first pair of consecutive setbacks (0-1-1) of any kind in over two months. Matthews’ offensive eruption put them back in the win column.
"Obviously, just the start helps," says Matthews. "Anytime they pushed back and got a goal, we responded. A lot of really good things to like tonight, and we just want to continue to carry over this momentum into the weekend."
Toronto returns home to host Edmonton on Saturday, and the Leafs face another set of back-to-backs this weekend. They'll face the Hurricanes in Carolina on Sunday.
Trying to extend their three-game winning streak against the Leafs, the Caps pulled to within a goal on three different occasions, but they made too many mistakes in coverage and in their own end, and it cost them dearly as the night wore on.
“Obviously we had zero answer for [No.] 34 tonight, in their lineup,” rues Caps’ coach Spencer Carbery. “So that’s an issue. And then it felt like we made a few mistakes, uncharacteristic, big, big mistakes in big moments.
“Even though – for the most part – we did a lot of good things, we just had some isolated incidents that were uncharacteristic, and just can’t happen.”
Matthews’ opening salvo was the lone goal of the first frame, and the Caps generated a number of high quality opportunities of their own in the first, only to be denied at every turn by Toronto goaltender Joseph Woll.
Once again, Toronto struck in the first minute of the middle period. Washington had an early 2-on-1 rush, but Dylan Strome’s feed rolled off the stick of Ivan Miroshnichenko and went harmlessly into the corner. Toronto’s John Tavares fired a bullet of a feed to send William Nylander into Washington ice, and from the right circle, Nylander wired a rocket to the shelf for a 2-0 Toronto lead, just 56 seconds into the second.
Needing the next goal, Washington got it on the game’s first power play, just ahead of the midpoint of the middle frame. John Carlson put one on a tee for Alex Ovechkin, and the Caps’ captain delivered a one-timer to the back of the net from the lower half of the left circle, making it a 2-1 contest at 9:57.
Three minutes later, Matthews restored Toronto’s two-goal lead with a seeing-eye shot through traffic from the blueline.
The resilient Caps answered back 35 seconds later, making it a 3-2 game when Connor McMichael scored on a broken play at 13:34.
Late in the second, Matthews scored on a rebound, and hats began to fly onto the ice. But Washington’s crack video coaching crew issued a successful challenge; Leafs’ winger Tyler Bertuzzi was in the zone ahead of the play. The goal was taken off the board, the game was still a 3-2 contest, and the hats were sacrificed for naught.
But Washington was not able to get to the second intermission with the deficit at just one. In the final minute of the frame, the Leafs won an offensive zone draw, and less than 10 seconds later, they were again up by a pair; Bryan McCabe deflected a point shot home at 19:35, enabling the visitors to take a 4-2 lead to the third.
Three of the four Toronto goals to that point were scored in the first or last minute of a period.
“Through the first period especially and the second one, I thought we played pretty good, as far as chances and zone time and all that good stuff,” says Caps’ defenseman Trevor van Riemsdyk. “But they’re a high-end skill team, and if you give them chances, they’re going to score. We didn’t do enough in front of [goaltender] Chucky [Lindgren] to give ourselves a good chance.”
After killing off an early Leafs power play in the third, the Caps again pulled to within a goal when Dylan Strome set up Ovechkin’s second of the night – and fifth in the last three games – at 6:42.
Ovechkin now has 23 goals on the season, and 845 for his career. He is 50 goals away from passing Wayne Gretzky (894) for the top spot on the NHL's all-time goals ledger.
Defensive zone play was a hallmark of the Caps winning the last three games of their just completed five-game road trip, but their details in their own end deserted them on Wednesday. A mere 76 seconds after Ovechkin’s second goal of the game, Bobby McMann restored the Leafs’ two-goal cushion with a rush goal at 7:58.
Bertuzzi scored less than a minute later, and the rout was on. Tavares scored the seventh Leafs goal on Toronto’s fifth power play of the final frame, and the Caps’ first home game in 11 nights ended in the team’s 21st loss by three or more goals this season.
“We’re behind the eight ball from the start,” rues Carbery. “We fight back multiple times in that game and get it within striking distance, and then it just felt like we would make that one mistake or just that shift that would kill us, or it killed the momentum of us getting back into the game. It happened multiple times.”
The homestand continues on Friday when the Carolina Hurricanes come to town, and the Caps know they can’t let losses linger, and they especially can’t let them pile up.
“We’ve been playing really good hockey lately, and I think this is going to be a one off for our group,” says McMichael. “We’re going to regroup and get ready for [practice] tomorrow, and then focus on Carolina on Friday. We’re still in the fight, and we know how close we are, so I’m sure we’re going to respond.”
