Strome's OT Goal Wins it for Caps

Dylan Strome capped off a strong preseason by scoring the game-winning goal 39 seconds into overtime on Saturday night at Capital One Arena, enabling the Caps to claim a 4-3 victory over the Columbus Blue Jackets.

John Carlson and Connor Brown converged on Blue Jackets winger Johnny Gaudreau in the Washington end, shaking the puck loose from him as he entered the slot. Carlson carried behind the Caps' cage and then fired a long stretch pass up to right wing wall to spring Brown into Columbus ice on a 2-on-1 with Strome on the left side. Brown feathered a saucer feed over the defender's stick, and Strome buried it from in tight to win it for Washington.

"We were talking before the [overtime-opening] face-off there that if they get a chance, we're going to just go," recounts Strome. "That's how overtime works, usually. I didn't play much overtime last year, so happy to get the opportunity to be out there. Brownie made a heck of a pass; it's a three-foot saucer pass right over a sliding [defenseman] for an open net. You can't ask for much more than that."
Facing each other for the second time in as many Saturday nights, the Caps and Jackets combined for a somewhat choppy but entertaining game, one that featured four power plays on each side and a combined total of 70 shots on net.
"It was good," says Caps coach Peter Laviolette of the special teams affair. "Probably both teams are happy to get work; you get a lot of power plays, a lot of penalty kills, you get overtime. There's a lot of full lineups in there, so I think it's a good set-up for opening night where you get a lot of work in.
"You see at practice that we work on power play and penalty kill all the time. But sometimes the power play guys are on the penalty kill; they don't necessarily get a chance. And so a night like tonight is a good teaching night where you can go back and see some good things that we did, and some things that we can do better. But it's always better when it's live and you're in real time."
The first half of the opening period was quiet, particularly in relation to the second half. Caps Anthony Mantha got the scoring started at 9:56 of the first, deflecting a Martin Fehervary wrist shot past Jackets goalie Elvis Merzlikins from the left point.

Columbus needed less than a minute to respond, getting even on a Patrik Laine goal 41 seconds after the Mantha marker. The Jackets won a draw in their own end, and a dozen seconds later Laine fired a shot past Darcy Kuemper from between the hash marks, tying the game at 10:37.
With Garnet Hathaway in the box for interference, Yegor Chinakhov gave the Blue Jackets their first lead with a power-play goal at 14:58. Chinakhov put a laser of a shot to the far side to make it a 2-1 game.
Less than 90 seconds later, the Caps went to the power play courtesy of a Boone Jenner holding call. Washington was dominant with the extra man, spending most of the two minutes in the offensive zone and constantly creating, but it wasn't able to score.
Not to worry, kid. Jenner came out of the box and went right back in, this time for an unwise slashing violation in the offensive zone. This time, the Caps cashed in. Evgeny Kuznetsov gained the Columbus line on the rush, then slid a pass a cross for Alex Ovechkin. Carlson bumped it onto the captain's blade, and Ovechkin's one-time blast from above the left circle eluded Merzlikins to make it a 2-2 game with 12.7 seconds left in the first.
In the middle frame, the Jackets regained the lead on a Sean Kuraly shot that beat Kuemper on the glove side at 3:25. Nic Dowd squeaked a shot through Merzlikins' pads at 8:34 to knot the game again, and then then penalties started up, again.
Washington missed a chance to retake the lead on a man advantage less than a minute after the Dowd goal, and then the Blue Jackets closed out the period with three straight power play opportunities in a span of less than eight minutes.
Each team had a power play in the third and each team had its share of looks and chances, but the final frame was scoreless and overtime was needed to settle the score. That's when Strome stepped up and made a winner of Kuemper, who stopped 36 of 39 shots he faced on the night.
For the second straight game, Kuemper kept the Caps in the contest early until his teammates could get the offense cranked up.
"It's nice especially in preseason," says Kuemper of seeing, feeling and handling a lot of pucks early in the last two exhibitions. "You want to get some reps and start getting comfortable with different parts of the game. So it's nice to get some work and to see some of those game situations that are harder to replicate in practice, so those were perfect preseason games to be in."