Thursday night was a night of milestones at Capital One Arena, and it was also a night in which both Washington and Dallas were seeking to avoid a third straight overtime loss. Both ended up doing so, but the Caps came out on the short end of a 5-4 shootout decision, a disappointing outcome given the two-goal lead they held into the latter stages of the second period.
On the good side of the coin, the Caps scored four goals in Thursday’s game; they entered the contest with just two goals in their previous eight periods of hockey, both from Tom Wilson. Dylan Strome scored twice for the Caps, and his second goal was the 100th of his NHL career, and it was also the 1,500th point of Caps’ captain Alex Ovechkin’s career.
In addition to those milestones, Dallas veteran Matt Duchene played in his 1,000th NHL game on Thursday, and Caps’ center Evgeny Kuznetsov suited up for his 700th career contest. Both players would mark their special nights by etching their names on the scoresheet.
Ironically, Washington’s woes mushroomed when the goal-starved Caps began to press for more offense. Leading 3-1 late in the second, the Caps yielded a goal against on a 2-on-1 Dallas rush, a rush that was fueled when Caps’ winger Nicolas Aube-Kubel’s shot on a Washington odd man rush rolled the glass and sparked a Dallas break in the other direction.
Early in the third, Wilson was deemed guilty of goaltender interference when he flattened Dallas netminder Scott Wedgewood while driving to the net. Dallas pulled even on the ensuing power play, its only extra man opportunity of the evening.
“You just go down the list,” says Caps’ coach Spencer Carbery. “I’ll go through the film and I’ll probably see 25 of those situations where we make just head scratching mistakes in moments where you have control of the game. That’s where we’ve got a long way to go to grow as a team; you just don’t make those mistakes when you’re trying to win games and protect leads.”
Washington got on the board first, and unsurprisingly, it was their most effective recent forward trio that combined to manufacture the goal on the forecheck. From inside the Washington line, Nick Jensen pushed the puck up the right wing wall for Connor McMichael, who put it deep behind the Dallas cage. Wedgewood fielded it behind the net and went to make a play on it, but a hard charging Anthony Mantha blunted his bid, the puck going instead to Aliaksei Protas, who was also below the goal line. As Wedgewood scrambled back to the crease, Protas banked the puck off the goalie and in for a 1-0 Washington lead at 7:11 of the first.
The lead lasted until the back half of the first when Dallas pulled even on a nifty Tyler Seguin goal. From high on the right side of the Washington zone, Stars’ forward Sam Steel spotted Tyler Seguin circling the back of the net after missing a shot try. Seguin curled out low on the weak side, near the goal line. Steel fed Seguin perfectly through a wide seam, and the latter issued a one-timer from there, tying the game at 1-1 at 15:38 of the opening period.
Washington regained the lead with a pair of goals less than three minutes apart in the front half of the middle frame. First, Strome grabbed a puck that Wilson was trying to settle in the high slot; Strome whipped a shot past Wedgewood to make it 2-1 Caps at 4:31.
Protas made an excellent defensive play to strip a Stars’ skater at the Washington line, pushing the puck to Matthew Phillips, who in turn sprung Kuznetsov on a breakaway. Kuznetsov beat Wedgewood with an against-the-grain move at 7:14 to extend the lead to 3-1.
“I knew I needed a good backcheck,” recounts Protas, the Caps’ leading scorer for the month of November. “It was fortunate for me I got this puck to Philly, who made a great pass to Kuzy.”
“Protas makes a heck of a track on that play to create Kuzy’s breakaway goal,” says Carbery.
Later in the frame, Dallas began to assert itself a bit more offensively, and the Caps needed Lindgren to make strong stops on Roope Hintz, Matt Duchene and Thomas Harley. But Lindgren couldn’t stop them all. Duchene put a pass in Mason Marchment’s wheelhouse on a 2-on-1 late in the frame after Aube-Kubel’s miss, and Marchment converted at 14:19 to pull the Stars to within one at second intermission.
In the first half minute of the third, Wilson barreled into Wedgewood and went to the box. At 1:51, Hintz tied the game on a power play, popping home a loose puck after Lindgren desperately tried to swat it out of harm’s way with his paddle; he just missed.
Strome restored the Washington lead with a nifty shot from the left circle on the power play at 9:08, giving the Caps another chance to usher a lead to the buzzer. Strome’s goal came mere seconds after Lindgren’s dazzling stop on Steel’s shorthanded bid for the first Dallas lead of the night. Ovechkin picked up the secondary assist, becoming just the fifth player to reach 1,500 points with the same team, joining luminaries Steve Yzerman, Mario Lemieux, Joe Sakic and Sidney Crosby on that short and distinguished list.
“It’s a pretty cool number,” says Ovechkin. “I always say, without my teammates, I would never reach it. It’s pretty cool.”
“I think he’ll get the puck,” quips Strome of sharing a milestone with The Great Eight on the same goal. “That’s okay. He made a good play to get it up there to [Mantha]. He’s a living legend, and it’s an honor to play with him. Hopefully I can start feeding him, so he can get some more goals.”
But Hintz struck again off the rush at 13:47, firing a shot home from the top of the left circle after the Caps again yielded an odd man rush – a 3-on-2 – while pressing for an insurance goal.
Lindgren made another stellar stop on Jamie Benn with about five minutes left in regulation to ensure the Caps would get a single point. Washington had some looks in overtime, and in ended the extra session with 72 seconds worth of power play time, but it could not manage to light the lamp despite a couple of Ovechkin one-timers from the left dot office.
Jason Robertson won it for Dallas in the shootout; he scored in the first round while all three Washington shooters missed. Thursday’s win enabled the Stars to head home with a pair of points from a three-game road trip, after they dropped the first two games of the journey in Florida.
“We were staring at going home from a road trip [empty-handed],” says Stars’ coach Pete DeBoer. “And really, we’ve played some pretty good hockey. We found a way to grind it out, and to get a win tonight.”
