POSTGAME NOTEBOOK: Caps 6, Rangers 3

Edge Of Seventeen - With T.J. Oshie unavailable because of personal/family matters and with Evgeny Kuznetsov (and goaltender Ilya Samosonov) sidelined for disciplinary reasons, the Caps started Monday's game against the Rangers in New York with 11 forwards, one shy of the typical full complement of a dozen. And because defenseman Justin Schultz missed Monday's game with a lower body injury and Washington has no salary cap space of which to speak, the team was unable to add a forward or a defenseman to its roster to mitigate any of those absences.

That meant the Caps needed both Alex Ovechkin and John Carlson in the lineup just to have seventeen skaters, which again is one shy of a full complement. Ovechkin had missed the previous four games and Carlson the previous two because of lower body injuries. The Caps were unsure whether either Ovechkin or Carlson would be able to dress until pregame warmup. When both did, the Caps started the game with 17 skaters, doing so for the first time in the salary cap era, and the first time since April 4, 2004, the final game of the 2003-04 regular season.
So when Ovechkin was forced to retire for the night after one single shift of 39 seconds in duration, the Caps were down to 10 forwards and six defensemen for the remainder of the evening. When Tom Wilson incurred a double-minor for roughing along with a 10-minute misconduct in the middle of the second period, the Caps were down to nine forwards for a stretch of time. (On Tuesday morning, the NHL announced that Wilson had been assessed a $5,000 fine - the maximum allowable under the Collective Bargaining Agreement - for roughing Rangers forward Pavel Buchnevich.)
By night's end, six of those forwards had found the back of the net and four of them had recorded single-game highs in ice time for the season. The Caps jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the first but found themselves down 3-2 in the final minutes of the second, and they rallied back with four unanswered goals in the final 22 minutes to skate off with a 6-3 win.

"It's just banding together," says Caps right wing Garnet Hathaway, who scored the tying goal late in the second period and skated a season high of 16:25. "I think we had a lot of adversity that we had to go through, and you know you're short on the bench and you know you've just got the guys next to you to play the game.
"The guys stepped up tonight. They relied on a lot of guys next to us to step up. It was a big effort win for us, a character win. It's just the guys in the room that just came together. It wasn't pretty for a while, but we managed to play our game in the end and came out with the win."
The Caps' Monday night win in Madison Square Garden was their first in the building this season, and first here since March 3, 2019. The victory prevented a third straight loss for the Caps, who haven't lost as many as three straight in any fashion in nearly three months now.
"One thing about this League, you're kind of always with your back against the wall, especially when you're on the road," says Hathaway. "Absolutely nothing is given to you in this League.
"It was tough to lose [Ovechkin] early. You saw the too many men penalty; it was a lot of shifting of lines. There was a lot of communication that had to go into what was going on, and that was one time we messed up. It was throughout the game, though. You had to be on your toes and every guy had to be ready to play any position at any time."
I Can Help - Caps winger Michael Raffl played his sixth game with the team following his April 12 trade from Philadelphia to Washington, and he picked up a pair of primary helpers in the game, his first points as a member of the Capitals.
Raffl skated 15:35 in Monday's game, recording three shots on net and assisting on Conor Sheary's first-period goal and Nicklas Backstrom's goal midway through the third. The latter goal came just after Raffl had a couple of glorious chances of his own, one of them on a breakaway.
After the game, Caps coach Peter Laviolette had some strong and kind words for Raffl's play in his six games with Washington.
"I thought he was fantastic," says the Caps coach of Raffl. "I think he's been terrific in every game he has been in. He is a guy that fills a lot of positions for us, literally all positions for us - literally all positions tonight; he played center, left wing and right wing. He did it on every line, had some power play time, kills penalties, created scoring chances, provides physicality and has just a real good awareness of the game and with his hockey sense.
"He was really good tonight, but I think he has been that way since he entered the lineup."

Sprong Rain - Caps winger Daniel Sprong skated a season-high 17:10 in Monday's game, and he led the Capitals with a career high seven shots on net and with eight shot attempts.
Sprong's third-period goal was the game-winner on Monday, the third time in the last five games that he has scored the game-winner. Sprong has netted the game-winning goal in each of Washington's last three victories.
I Appear Missing - After Monday's game, Laviolette provided some clarity on the Caps' thought process regarding Kuznetsov and Samsonov sitting out for disciplinary reasons and on Ovechkin as well.
Laviolette was asked whether it was more difficult to discipline a player or players when it results in playing a game shorthanded.
"It's not about that," Laviolette responds. "It's about we've got to work together inside here, and there's got to be rules, there's got to be boundaries. There have to be expectations set, and you have to be accountable to that."
As to Ovechkin, here's what Laviolette said about the Caps' captain dressing for the game but coming out after one shift of 39 seconds in duration:
"We felt really good in the morning [on Monday]. You saw him practicing before we left [D.C. on Sunday], and it felt really good in the morning. We went into the warmups and it was not quite as good. We were already shorthanded so it's not like we were making a lineup decision.
"He got into the game, and the first shift he didn't feel comfortable. And so at that point, we're not going to push or risk. I guess we were going more off how he felt {Sunday] and how he felt in the pre-game skate; there weren't any issues. It just wasn't quite as good in the warmups. And so he came out for a spin, and decided to call it off."
By The Numbers -Carlson led the Caps with 25 minutes in ice time and with three blocked shots … Backstrom and Nic Dowd had three hits each to lead the Capitals … Dowd won 14 of 21 face-offs (67%).