According to the promotional schedule, Thursday night was “Country Music Night” at Capital One Arena, with the Capitals hosting the St. Louis Blues. But by night’s end, it was much more like a combination of “Country Roads” night and “Turn Back The Clock Night.”
T.J. Oshie recorded his first hat trick since Oct. 25, 2021 – the sixth of his regular season NHL career – against the team that drafted him and for which he played the first 443 games of his NHL career. Those three goals were the difference in a 5-2 Washington win over the Blues.
“It’s crazy how that worked out,” says Oshie. “I’ll hear ‘Country Roads’ anytime, though.”
Oshie’s hat trick meant that a jubilant crowd heard “Country Roads” – Oshie’s personal goal song – three times on Thursday. With the hat trick, Oshie now has seven goals on the season, and 297 for his NHL career. After managing four points (two goals, two assists) in his first 21 games of the season, Oshie has notched six points (five goals, one assist) in five games since returning from an 11-game injury absence, a span that included a journey to Minnesota for some hands-on attention from his personal chiropractor.
“At the beginning of the year with him not scoring and the point production not there,” begins Caps’ coach Spencer Carbery, “it never changed what he brought from a competitiveness standpoint, from a leadership standpoint, from a bench demeanor standpoint. Him coming back in the lineup, he’s done all of that stuff. His play has been outstanding.
“And then for him to get rewarded offensively has been great. Tonight, for him to get a hat trick against his former team – lead the charge – I’m just really proud of him and happy for him that he gets rewarded tonight.”
Since returning to action a week ago in a game against Seattle, Oshie appears to have either turned back the clock on his career, or perhaps he found the fountain of youth in the land of 10,000 lakes.
“I just go see my chiro there,” he shrugs. “It’s the same guy that I’ve seen for two years now, anytime I miss time with certain injuries, and this time was no different.”
Thursday’s triumph enables the Caps to stack up a pair of consecutive wins for the first time since a three-game winning run from Dec. 17-21, and when Oshie filled the hat trick with an empty-net goal in the waning seconds of regulation, it halted a streak of 22 straight games in which Washington had been held to four or fewer goals, the seventh longest stretch of its kind in franchise history.
Special teams were a significant factor in Thursday’s game, as the two teams spent much of the game trading opportunities with the extra skater. St. Louis entered the game on a bit of an extra-man heater; the Blues came in with five power-play goals in their previous three games (5-for-10, 50%).
It was Washington that went on the power play first, and the Caps cashed in just after the midpoint of the first. Following a neutral zone regroup, Oshie carried back into St. Louis ice. He briefly lost control of the puck but regained it, and he quickly ripped a wrist shot to the top right corner of the cage for a 1-0 Washington lead at 10:24 of the first.
It marked the first time in 25 home games this season that Washington scored the game’s first goal in the first period, on the team’s first power play opportunity of the evening.
Minutes later, the Blues had a four-minute power play opportunity when Hendrix Lapierre was handed a double minor for hi-sticking. The Caps limited St. Louis to just two shots on that power play, but Charlie Lindgren had to make a big stop on Pavel Buchnevich’s backhand bid from the top of the paint. Lindgren’s teammates blocked a couple of St. Louis shot attempts as well.
Although the Blues couldn’t convert with the extended extra-man opportunity, they did draw even before first intermission. Old friend Nathan Walker bit the hand that once fed him, notching his second goal of the season with a deft deflection of a Nick Leddy drive from the left point at 17:54, squaring the score at 1-1.
Early in the second, the Caps regained the lead with the help of some good fortune. Lapierre carried into St. Louis ice and dropped a feed for Nicolas Aubé-Kubel. Aubé-Kubel carried down to the bottom half of the right circle before throwing a centering feed toward the front, where it hit the stick of Blues’ blueliner Justin Faulk and bounded home for a 2-1 Washington lead at 3:32.
The Caps killed off another St. Louis power play in the front half of the second, denying the Blues’ bid to draw even for a second time.
Just after the midpoint of the middle period, Oshie struck again, doing so on the power play again. This time, he finished a tic-tac-toe passing sequence with a one-timer from the bumper spot, and with his 5-on-5 linemates – Max Pacioretty and Dylan Strome – assisting at 10:27.
Twenty seconds after Oshie’s second goal, the Caps successfully snuffed out another St. Louis power play. And with about three and a half minutes left in the second, Washington killed off a fifth Blues power play without incident.
Early in the third, the Blues finished killing off a carryover Washington power play, but four seconds later, Strome buried a rebound of an Alex Ovechkin shot to make it a 4-1 game. Ovechkin returned after a three-game absence because of a lower body injury, and his assist pushed his point streak to seven (two goals, six assists).
Faulk got one back for the Blues a few minutes later, firing a shot through traffic and just under the crossbar to make it a 4-2 contest at 4:01.
Oshie scored into the vacated St. Louis cage at 19:40 of the third.
On the night, the Caps limited St. Louis to just 19 shots on net, and only 11 of those came at even strength.
“Obviously, execution is the number one thing,” says Blues’ interim coach Drew Bannister. “We lacked execution from our top players in those situations. They were able to score the first goal; a lot of them were preventable.”
Washington’s power play has factored into a few of the team’s wins this season, and its penalty kill has factored heavily into a few more. But Thursday’s triumph was a true special teams victory for the Caps, who blanked a St. Louis power play that entered the game with five goals in its previous three games.
“Both [special teams] were phenomenal tonight,” says Carbery. “The power play arguably scores three tonight, because they get that early one at the beginning of the third, just after it expired. Huge goals, huge moments, and I just loved the process. Entries were good for the most part, puck recoveries [too]. We problem solved a situation twice where we read off one another, and it just looked really clean and connected to me, of five guys knowing what was next.
“And then the penalty kill, when you go back in that game, there were some teetering moments where if they score a power-play goal, now all of a sudden the game has flipped. There were probably three penalty kills that I remember [thinking] ‘It’s a huge kill.’ And when you keep stressing your penalty kill and you do it once, and you do it twice, you’re just waiting for that – you do it three, four times, and all of a sudden, it’s in the back of your net, and you rolled the dice one too many times.
“The penalty kill just answered, answered, and did a really good job.”
