"It seemed like we had a lot of [offensive] zone time and then they would get odd man rushes, and that was it. It was just one of those games where we had to stick with it, stick with our mindset of grinding it out down low, and in the end it won us the game."
Washington scored first, doing so for the 40th time in 55 games this season at 5:57 of the first. Evgeny Kuznetsov and linemates Justin Williams and Marcus Johansson (with some aid from blueliners Brooks Orpik and Nate Schmidt) did a great job of keeping the puck alive in the Detroit zone without seeming to have full possession. Eventually, Kuznetsov was able to swat it to Johansson, who potted it to put the Caps on top.
"It was kind of bouncing around there for a while," recounts Johansson. "We had a lucky play to keep it in the zone there, and then [Williams] made a great play to get it to [Kuznetsov]. That's the way it goes sometimes, but I think that's where hard work pays off. If you don't quit on it, you can get those kind of breaks and we did."
Detroit answered back several minutes later, getting an Andreas Athanasiou goal from the slot seconds after the two sides returned to even strength after a couple of minutes of four-on-four hockey.
With Nicklas Backstrom in the box for boarding Wings defenseman Jonathan Ericsson, Athanasiou scored his second of the night on the power play to lift the Wings to a 2-1 lead at 16:23.