POSTGAME NOTEBOOK: Blues 5, Caps 2

Blue Mood -The Caps started their three-game road trip with a misstep on Thursday night in St. Louis, losing a 5-2 decision to the Blues. St. Louis was playing without Cap-killer Vladimir Tarasenko, but the Blues were playing with a fully healthy defense corps for the first time in 2018-19.

When the 2018-19 season got underway, both the Caps and the Blues had nine players whose salary cap hits were greater than $5 million a season, the most of any teams in the league. Washington entered Thursday's game atop the Metropolitan Division standings while St. Louis occupied the basement of the Central Division.
For the most part, the Caps have been getting their money's worth from their top players while the Blues have not. But on this night in early January, the Blues were easily the better team.

"Ever since I got here a couple of years ago," says Caps winger Brett Connolly. "It seems that we've always found an urgency after we haven't played well on consecutive nights. Usually our leaders step up and everybody else follows; that's kind of the way our team works. Our top end guys and our leaders in the room, they step up and everybody kind of rolls behind those guys, and we're a tough team to beat when we do that.
"But we'll move on and we'll bury it. Obviously everyone knows it wasn't our best game - [it was] probably our worst one in a while. So you just move on, you turn the page. That's what good teams do, you turn the page when you don't play your best and you answer back right away the next time. We've got back-to-backs, and that's good to have a game right away to forget about this one. We can play a lot better than we did tonight."
The Great Eight - Alex Ovechkin scored Washington's first goal on Thursday, netting his 30th goal of the season to tie the game at 1-1 in the first period. It's the 14th time in as many seasons that the Caps' captain has scored 30 or more goals in a season.

Ovechkin is now just the second player in NHL history to reel off 14 straight 30-goal campaigns at the start of his career; he joins former Capital and Hockey Hall of Famer Mike Gartner in that elite company. Gartner had 15 straight seasons with 30 or more goals at the start of his career, a streak that ended when he scored a dozen goals in 38 games during the lockout-abbreviated season of 1994-95, a campaign that was truncated to 48 games. Gartner followed that season with two more seasons of 30-plus goals.
"It's amazing what he has done," says Caps coach Todd Reirden of Ovechkin. "But that was encouraging. Obviously we made some adjustments to our lines and I thought they got some opportunities offensively, and he is able to convert on that.
"He is just an elite, elite scorer that we are so fortunate to have on our team. The league is even fortunate just to have this type of player that is a generational talent. But to score 30 again this year is quite an accomplishment. After going through a long season last year, he continues to get a year older but he still does the phenomenal things. Just the way he is able to score goals is just unmatchable for the most part.
Only Gartner and Jaromir Jagr (15) have had more consecutive 30-goal seasons than Ovechkin; Jagr's streak didn't start with his rookie season. Ovechkin matches Hockey Hall of Famers Gordie Howe, Wayne Gretzky and Marcel Dionne - all three finished their respective careers with 14 seasons of 30 or more goals.
This season marks the fifth time in his career - all in the last seven seasons - that Ovechkin was the first player in the league to reach the 30-goal plateau. It's the third season in which he has reached 30 goals in fewer than 40 games; he also did so in 2007-08 and in 2013-14.
Ovechkin is just the third player in NHL history to be the first in the league to reach 30 goals beyond his 30th birthday. The 33-year-old Ovechkin joins 34-year-old Bill Cook in 1930-31 and 36-year-old Teemu Selanne in 2006-07 on that short list.
"So that's an extremely positive [development] out of the game," says Reirden. "I'm happy to see him [score]. He's had some good chances and just didn't get rewarded the last few games. Hopefully, we and that line can build on some of the things we did offensively and go into [Friday's] game in Dallas."

Missed Opportunities - Washington entered Thursday's game with a five-game road winning streak, one shy of matching the Caps' all-time franchise record of six, established in 1983-84 and matched in 2010-11. The Caps obviously fell short, and must start a new streak from scratch.
The Caps also entered Thursday's game - the front end of a set of back-to-back contests - with three straight sweeps of back-to-back sets, one shy of the franchise mark in that regard as well. They'll start from scratch there, too.
By The Numbers -John Carlson led the Caps with 23:24 in ice time … Ovechkin, Dmitrij Jaskin, Tom Wilson and Evgeny Kuznetsov had three shots on net each to lead the Caps … T.J. Oshie led Washington with five shot attempts … Madison Bowey and Brooks Orpik had three hits each to lead the Caps … Wilson led the caps with three blocked shots … Washington won only 15 of 47 face-offs (32 percent) in the game … The Blues defeated Braden Holtby for the first time in his career; he is now 7-1-0 lifetime against St. Louis.