Last week wasn’t the best for the Capitals; they dropped three straight games on home ice, their first three-game slide this season. This week, they've slowly regained their collective swagger, and it came to the fore in the third period of Friday night’s game against Detroit at Capital One Arena.
Washington erupted for four third-period goals – three of them coming on six shots before the first television timeout – including a pair of shorthanded goals on as many penalty kills, erasing a 2-1 deficit in a convincing 5-2 victory over the Red Wings. Detroit has dropped five straight games.
With three points (two goals, one assist) in the third period, Aliaksei Protas now has 54 points (25 goals, 29 assists) in 63 games on the season. That’s one more point than the 53 (13 goals, 40 assists) he amassed over the first three seasons of his career, encompassing 169 games.
Protas’ shorthanded goal in the first minute of the third sparked the comeback, tying the game at 2-2. The big winger took a feed from Tom Wilson, turned on the jets to skirt weary Detroit defenseman Moritz Seider, then fired a laser of a shot from the left dot to the far right corner of the cage to square the score at 2-2, just 51 seconds into the third.
“With that shot and skating, it’s just a testament to the work that he has put in to just continue to get better and better and better,” says Caps coach Spencer Carbery of Protas. “It’s great recognition. The other part is he notices there that Seider is a little bit tired; [the Wings] have been out there a little bit, and Seider’s been moving around, up and down the ice a couple of times.
“And so now, he can attack him, sees his gap isn’t great, and it’s a heck of a shot.”
It was, and it opened the floodgates.
Just over a minute later, Jakob Chychrun fired a shot home from center point with P-L Dubois blocking out the sun in front of Wings goalie Cam Talbot. Chychrun’s goal was his 18th of the season, matching his single-season best. Including tonight’s goal, six of Chychrun’s 18 tallies have been game-winners this season, the most of any defenseman in the NHL.
“I tried to get a shot off that I fanned on,” says Chychrun. “The puck was in my feet a little bit, and I was just able to gain possession of it. I felt a guy on my back, and I just tried to get some open ice for myself. I don’t think [Talbot] saw it, so it was a good screen.”
At 5:17, Protas struck again, finishing off a 200-foot sequence in a matter of seconds. John Carlson stretched a feed to Connor McMichael at the Detroit line, and he sent Protas in for his second goal in less than five minutes, making it a 4-2 Washington lead at 5:17.
Before the midpoint of the third, Protas sent Wilson in all alone on a shorthanded breakaway, and Wilson carved to the middle and five-holed Talbot at 9:19 to complete the scoring. Protas and Wilson set up each other’s shorties.
“I think it's just kind of feeling of each other,” says Protas of the chemistry between the duo. “First of all, there's no cheat, and we just try to have that feeling sometimes, knowing that it goes by and either there's a chance to go on the rush and do something; we are always trying.
“Tom is a real hard working player, really fast, and when he puts the pressure on, I think the power play unit is not happy with it and kind of scared for sure. And with Tom, when you go on the rush, you know you always have a chance, because he's a pretty skilled player.”
With 29 goals on the season, Wilson is now on the cusp of his first 30-goal season in the NHL. He has nine lamplighters in his last 11 games.
“I always say it's a really tough league to score,” says Wilson. And so whenever they're going in, you take them and you just put your head down and put in the work and just keep going. And a lot of credit to my linemates. I've said it all year, playing with [Dubois] and [Dylan Strome] and guys like Pro, [Connor McMichael], Ovi, it's a lot of talent on the ice, and it's a lot of fun to play with those guys. Whoever I'm playing with, they just seem to find me in good spots, and it’s been good.”
The Caps’ third-period eruption helped erase the memory of a sluggish start; Detroit’s Dylan Larkin scored 43 seconds into the game to stake his squad to a 1-0 lead, and Seider doubled the advantage with a power-play goal seven minutes into the first.
Late in the first, the Caps came up with a big goal to halve the 2-0 deficit. Rasmus Sandin sent Andrew Mangiapane into Detroit ice, and Mangiapane fed Taylor Raddysh in the slot. Talbot stopped Raddysh not once, but twice. But Raddysh tucked the third try, making it a 2-1 contest at 18:39.
Aside from a stirring fight from Brandon Duhaime, who gave Detroit’s Dominik Shine a tune-up when the latter took exception to the former’s clean hit on him, Washington had next to nothing going on in the game’s first 20 minutes. But coming away with a late goal – thanks to Raddysh’s diligence – put a different paint job on the game for the Caps, who turned in a much better and more assertive performance in what was a scoreless middle frame.
“We got the 8:30 start tonight from our group,” quips Carbery. “I honestly thought one of the key moments in the game was the Raddysh goal at the end of the first period. Because it was not good in the first period, and the guys knew that, so they’re trying to work through it, talk to each other, help each other out, say the right things.
“But we needed something to give us a little bit of momentum. The Duhaime fight was good; so he’s doing everything he can, but we needed a spark. The fight, great. The goal was huge.”
It was, and so is the win, Washington’s 41st of the season, one more than it managed all of last season. The Caps reached the 90-point plateau with Friday’s win, and they’re now a single point shy of matching last season’s total, with 19 games to go. They’ve also followed up last week’s three-game slide with a three-game winning streak.
With their win over the Wings, the Caps have now defeated each of the other 15 teams in the Eastern Conference at least once this season. And each of the Caps’ three victories this week came at the expense of a team fighting for one of the two wild card playoff berths in the east.
“At this time of year, any loss is tough,” says Wings coach Todd McLellan. “I think the way we lost is what stings more than anything. Our power play has been outstanding all year; the last two games I thought we really gave back a lot of momentum when we needed it.
“Obviously starting on a clean sheet in the third period, you’re counting on at least establishing some momentum for the period. A bad turnover, and it’s in our net. A few minutes later, we get another opportunity, and it’s in our net again. That really sucks the life out of the group.”
