Washington’s three-game winning streak was halted on Sunday afternoon in the opener of its three-game homestand against the Minnesota Wild at Capital One Arena. The Caps spotted the visitors a pair of early goals, and that was all the Wild – and Minnesota goaltender Jesper Wallstedt – needed in a 5-1 victory that was much closer than the score would indicate.
Minnesota started on time, while the Caps were still seeking to find their footing into the latter stages of the first frame. And in giving Wallstedt an early two-goal cushion with which to work, the Caps put themselves in an early hole that proved a bit too deep to dig out of. The big Swedish netminder stopped 26 of 27 shots to pick up his ninth win of the season, second most in the NHL.
“It was fun,” says Wallstedt of his first career appearance against the Caps. “I was more excited about for the first time playing [against Alex Ovechkin], that was incredible.
“He was drafted right after I was born – or somewhere around there – so I’ve grown up watching him. It was pretty surreal to play him for the first time.”
Minnesota’s Matt Boldy just missed staking his team to an early 1-0 lead on the first shift of the game, but even after the Caps dodged that bullet, they were pierced by two more that came ahead of the six-minute mark of the first period.
“I just didn’t think we were sharp at all to start the game,” says Caps coach Spencer Carbery. “It was a bunch of different stuff; a failed breakout 10 seconds in. It should have been 1-0 10 seconds in; Boldy on that one-timer. I don’t know how he missed it.
“Failed breakout, failed wall play, and the next thing you know, right out of the gate, we’re on our heels.”
Each of the first two play stoppages of Sunday afternoon’s game came following a Minnesota goal, and both of those came before the first television timeout of the first frame.
Quinn Hughes scored the Wild’s first goal at 3:42 of the first period, sneaking a slot shot through a screen and Logan Thompson to lift the visitors to an early lead. Hughes’ goal came on Minnesota’s second shot on net of the contest.
The Wild forechecked its way to a 2-0 lead less than two minutes later when the failed wall play to which Carbery referred came back to bite them. Ilya Protas lost the handle along the right wall in Washington ice, and the Wild’s Bobby Brink went below the goal line and threw it blindly to the front. Minnesota got a fortuitous bounce off Blake Coleman’s stick to Michael McCarron in the slot, and the latter’s one-timer beat Thompson at 5:42 to make it 2-0.
Although the Caps found their wheels later in the frame, and although they went toe-to-toe with the Wild for most of the next 54 minutes, the damage was done.
The Caps’ lone goal came in the waning seconds of the middle period when Cole Hutson put a right point shot toward the net and Justin Sourdif executed a perfect deflection to put the lone blemish on Wallstedt on this afternoon.
Down 2-1 entering the third, the Caps were just a shot away, but they couldn’t solve Wallstedt. Washington managed just five shots on net in the first, but it had 11 in each of the last two periods.
“I just I thought we started to move our feet more,” says Caps winger Jordan Kyrou, whose six-game point streak was stopped on Sunday. “We're playing more connected, and with that, we started getting more chances, and we kind of took it to them in the second.”
The game’s first two periods were played entirely at 5-on-5, and after killing off an early penalty in the third to keep the Wild close, the Caps finally get their first – and as it turned out, their only – extra-man opportunity of the game midway through the third. That chance died early when Kyrou was boxed for hi-sticking Minnesota’s Matt Kiersted just under a minute into the man advantage.
Entering the final three minutes of regulation, it was still a 2-1 game. But a phantom hi-sticking call on Tom Wilson led to a Minnesota power play, and Maxim Shabanov made it 3-1 on a Wild power play at 17:37.
Add in an empty-net goal from Kirill Kaprizov at 19:02 and the second 5-on-3 power play goal the Caps have yielded in as many games – from Danila Yurov at 19:35 – and the Wild finished with two goals in the first six minutes and three goals in the last three minutes of Sunday’s game.
Minnesota has played 11 of its first 16 games on the road this season, and it has pulled points in eight of the 11 (6-3-2).
“Tonight in particular, we got off to a good start and we were moving the puck well,” says Wild coach John Hynes. “I thought our puck pressure and the pace of the game that we played was strong, and it allowed us to make a couple of plays, and we put a couple in the net early.”
“What I felt like was, we felt what a team that you know is veteran, hard, heavy, battle tested, been there before, has arguably the best line and best defenseman in the National Hockey League,” says Carbery. “So, it was overwhelming to start, and I felt like our guys were very overwhelmed in that moment. And then we were able to settle in and get to our game. But I thought the first – whatever it was – 15 minutes; I would say toward the end of the first we started to figure it out. But we were overwhelmed by their team.”
