Dylan Strome delivered for the Caps in overtime on Tuesday night, converting an excellent John Carlson feed to lift the Capitals to a 4-3 victory over the Detroit Red Wings. Strome’s goal, his second of the game, gave the Caps their third straight win to close out a four-game homestand, and it was Washington’s sixth win in its last seven games.
Most importantly, the victory allowed the Caps to pick up a point on Detroit in the chase for the second wild card playoff berth in the Eastern Conference. Washington leads the Wings by two points, and it holds a game in hand on them with one game remaining between the two clubs, on April 9 in the Motor City.
A month ago in Detroit, the Caps absorbed an 8-3 trouncing at the hands of the Wings in Motown, a loss that left them nine points behind the Red Wings in the playoff hunt. Strome was a minus-4 in that game against the Wings, but in Tuesday’s win, he scored the go-ahead goal early in the third period and then netted the game-winner at 1:55 of the extra session, after Patrick Kane’s shot from the slot evened the game at 3-3 with 5:20 left, making overtime necessary.
“I was minus-4 in Detroit, so nice to turn that one around,” says Strome. “And obviously, just a big win for us. We battled hard. Chucky [Lindgren] made some unbelievable saves; even on their second goal there, he makes like three great, Grade A saves, like highlight of the night type saves, but they get a bounce and it goes in.
“But then we just stuck with it. It’s kind of what we’ve been doing since I guess the All-Star break, just hanging in there and finding a way to get it done, whether it‘s late or in overtime or whatever it may be. Everyone’s contributing, and we’ll obviously take the two points.”
As Strome mentions, Lindgren was again excellent, and he had to be at his best early in this one. Washington went to the penalty kill early in the game’s first minute, and Lindgren came up with a huge save on Fabbri from top of paint late in the power play, and another on a Dylan Larkin bid from the slot, seconds after the kill was completed.
On the sequence Strome noted late in the second period with the game tied at 1-1, Lindgren made five saves in less than a minute, including the last four in a span of 13 seconds before David Perron struck to give Detroit its only lead of the night, 2-1 with 43 seconds remaining in the middle frame.
The Caps scored first, going up a goal on a neat give-and-go play with Nick Jensen serving as the middle man for a Nic Dowd goal. Dowd got the puck from a forechecking Beck Malenstyn along the left wing wall in Detroit ice. Dowd then dished to Jensen at the right point. As the defenseman crept down the right side, Dowd went to the slot for the return feed, and he scored from there at 2:09 to lift the Caps into the lead.
Dowd gave the ex-Detroit defenseman a lot of the credit for the manufacture of Washington’s opening salvo; Tuesday’s game marks the 10th straight game in which the Caps have scored first and won, dating back to Feb. 17.
“Jens is a really, really good passer, and he’s really, really good in the offensive zone at the blueline, and he makes a lot of plays,” says Dowd. “There’s a reason they’ve kept him around, and he’s been in the League so long, and he’s been successful. He’s really, really good defensively and can be relief on all over the ice, especially on the [penalty] kill. And offensively, if he gets the puck, he can make a lot of plays.”
That 1-0 advantage lasted less than three minutes, until the Wings pulled even on an Alex DeBrincat rush goal at 4:53. DeBrincat went straight to the net, and was left with too much time and space, enabling him to tap the puck home from the top of the paint.
Perron’s late power-play goal in the middle period allowed Detroit to take its 2-1 lead into the second intermission, and that’s when Caps’ coach Spencer Carbery challenged his team to do what the Wings had been doing, namely, to start buzzing the Detroit net with bodies, pucks and sticks.
Connor McMichael added to a series of huge goals he has scored of late, taking Carbery’s advice to heart and tying the game at 2-2, just 35 seconds into the third. McMichael scored from below the goal line, beating Detroit netminder Alex Lyon to the right post.
“In between periods – between the second and third – we talked about how we needed to get more traffic in front,” says McMichael. “You look at their first two goals, and they were both battles in front, and they were a little heavier on their sticks. That’s what we talked about, and I just wanted to get to the blue paint.
“I saw Marty [Fehervary] take a shot, and it hit the end boards and came right to me, and I just beat the goalie to the post.”
McMichael has collected a point in seven of his last eight games, with five goals over that span.
Tuesday night was a tough night on the dot for Washington, which won only 38 percent of the game’s face-offs. In the first period, Detroit won all 10 of the draws it took in its own end, and it won 18 of 23 (78%) in its own end on the night.
Strome won a right dot draw early in the third in Detroit ice, pulling it back to Carlson at the right point and then heading to the net. Carlson wound up and fired, and Lyon made the stop. But Strome was there to deposit the rebound into the Wings net, four seconds after winning the face-off, putting the Caps back on top at 3-2, just 4:49 into the third.
Kane’s goal forced overtime, and the Caps were critically able to win three of the four draws in the extra session, giving them the lion’s share of possession. Strome scored the game-winner on an alert give-and-go play, fueled with a touch of speed.
From deep in Washington ice, rookie center Hendrix Lapierre used his wheels to shake off DeBrincat, then sent Strome into Detroit ice. Strome left it for Carlson near the line, then beat Larkin to the net and redirected the puck past Lyon, as a late-arriving DeBrincat smashed his stick on the glass behind the cage, ruing his late arrival.
“I was pretty tired; [I had] a couple shifts in overtime,” recounts Strome. “I’m not sure who he escaped out of the corner there, but [Lapierre] made a great play. I was trying to be there for support, but I saw that we might have had a little bit of a 2-on-1 if he got out of there, and he did. He’s a great skater.”
Down to its last 10 games of the season and in the midst of a season-long five-game road trip, the Wings move on to Carolina, Florida and Tampa Bay, respectively, from here, as they seek to end a playoff drought that dates back to 2017.
“We’re playing every other day on this trip,” says Larkin. “We’ve got to get back at it. It’s no easy task going into Carolina. We’re trying to catch teams now, and we have to keep going. We have to keep clawing and fighting for points.”
The Caps keep surprising people around the League, and they keep astounding those who watch them nightly. But they don’t much surprise themselves anymore.
“The resiliency is amazing to watch in this group of men,” says Carbery. “It seems very similar, but also very different every night. I thought we were okay; I didn’t mind our game the first two periods. I feel like we were generating a decent amount, we just weren’t finishing, whether it was an odd man rush or a Grade A.
“What I pointed out between the second and third – which I thought we completely flipped on – is there was a ton of activity around our net, on Chucky, and they score a couple of goals – rebounds, the power-play goal. It’s chaos, and they find a way. And I felt like we weren’t doing a good enough job to get ourselves into those spots.”
After the start of the third, McMichael did so. And Strome did so, twice. That was enough.
“I feel like lately, this group’s been through a little bit of adversity with teams tying it up late,” says McMichael. “And we keep finding a way, and that’s our identity now – we just find ways to win, no matter how it looks, whether it’s 7-6 or close games like tonight. We’re having a lot of fun right now.”
