recap sens

Alex Ovechkin added to his bevy of broken NHL records on Thursday night in Ottawa, he added to a record he has held for years now, and he drew himself closer to the one very visible record he is chasing. Ovechkin did this all with one shot, a shot that came at 3:07 of overtime, a shot that produced the only goal of the game in a 1-0 overtime victory over the Senators at Canadian Tire Centre.

Rasmus Sandin expertly broke up an Ottawa rush, denying Jake Sanderson a shot or a pass as the Sens defenseman skated swiftly and deep into Washington ice. Sandin then collected the puck behind the Washington net and began churning his legs like pistons toward the Ottawa end, down the middle of the ice on a 2-on-1 rush with Ovechkin on his left. Sandin gained the zone and slid a perfect backhand feed to the Caps captain, who quickly whipped a shot past rookie Sens goalie Leevi Merilainen.

“I knew I should take a shot as soon as I can, because I knew [Merilainen] may be thinking I’m going to pass it back to Sandy,” recounts Ovechkin. “And it was a good one, and it goes in the net, so I’ll take it.”

So will the Caps, who needed yet another stellar performance from Logan Thompson in net to be in a position where one Ovechkin shot could win it for them. Thursday’s victory is the Caps’ third in succession, and they extended their points streak to nine (6-0-3).

“I thought [Thompson] was fantastic, especially in that second period when we were taking on water,” says Caps coach Spencer Carbery. “To be able to get to the break and into the locker room at 0-0 at that point was a significant accomplishment, and then the guys picked him up.”

Merilainen – who authored shutouts in two of his previous three starts – became the 179th different goaltender to surrender at least one of Ovechkin’s 874 career goals, which is a new NHL standard; Jaromir Jagr scored against 178 goaltenders during his own brilliant career.

Ovechkin’s goal leaves him 21 goals shy of passing Wayne Gretzky (894) for the most goals in NHL history. Ovechkin’s overtime game-winner on Thursday in Ottawa is also his 27th career overtime game-winner, adding to a record he has held for years.

Ovechkin’s goal also produced Washington’s 30th victory of the season – the Caps join Winnipeg as the second team in the League to reach that plateau in 2024-25 – and it helped Logan Thompson nail down his 20th victory of the season, and his second consecutive shutout.

The Caps needed Thompson to make several important stops in the game’s first 40 minutes, but he also stepped up when needed in the third and in overtime, when the Caps were moving with more authority and handling the puck better than in the first two frames.

In the game’s first minute, Thompson denied Nick Cousins from the slot. Later in the period, he did the same to Tim Stützle and Brady Tkachuk. All shots came from the slot on plays that came from behind the net; those aren’t easy saves for goaltenders to make.

“You don’t want to get moving around too much, just staying in the blue paint and on the goal lines,” says Thompson of those saves. “It’s something that I learned from Sean Burke back in Vegas; just play deep and let the play come to you. And that’s what happened tonight.”

What also happened tonight was Thompson becoming the fastest Caps goaltender to reach 20 wins at the beginning of his career with the team; Jim Carey (30 games in 1994) held that record for over three decades.

Thompson improved to 20-2-3 on the season, and he is the first Caps goaltender to post back-to-back shutouts since Ilya Samsonov (Nov. 17-20, 2021). Thompson has stopped 76 of 77 shots (.987 save pct.) in his last three starts.

And don’t sleep on the play of Sandin on this night; he and partner John Carlson were the only two Caps who weren’t under water from a possession standpoint after 40 minutes, and his two-way brilliance on the game’s final shift was crucial to the Caps coming home with two points. Nine of Sandin’s 14 assists this season are of the primary variety.

“First off, we had LT in net, who is standing on his head a lot of times,” says Sandin. “So big credit to him. But at the same time, I think we tried to stick with it. They played a really good hockey game over there, and they’re tough to play against. I think we just stuck with it, and had pretty good goaltending and pretty decent defensive structure.

“And at the end, obviously we’ve got Ovi, who has scored a couple of goals in this League. We’re lucky we have him.

For much of Thursday’s game in Ottawa, the Capitals didn’t look like a team that was going to be going home with two points. But they’ve played similar games on the road recently; on Dec. 23 in Boston and Jan. 11 in Nashville, they scuffled their way through the game’s first 40 minutes, but they entered the third all even, and with a chance to win if they could put together a solid final 20 minutes.

They weren’t able to pull it off in Boston, but they’ve brought home a pair of points from Nashville and now Ottawa.

“Our guys are so battle tested,” says Carbery. “We don't get shaken, even though inside, I am like, ‘Let's go!’ They're cool as a cucumber. These guys have been in tight games the whole year, protected leads, come back, whatever. How many times have we come back this year to win a hockey game? [A League-leading 16.] In all those scenarios for us, our guys don't get rattled at all.

“Even in this situation where we've been heavily outplayed in that second period, we come in and we're able to flip the switch. And now all of a sudden, [we] get to our game right away, where sometimes if you're not used to that, if you're like, ‘Jeez, we're out-matched tonight,’ our guys don't feel like that at all. They're like, ‘We're going to win this game. We're going to find a way.

“And that's what you saw once again. Our group has done that all year, so the experience of going through that time and time again builds a ton of confidence with our group.”