Thursday night was a big one at Capital One Arena. The night began with a stirring ceremony to honor Alex Ovechkin’s Halley’s Comet achievement, overtaking Wayne Gretzky for the all-time NHL goal scoring lead. And the night ended with the Caps nailing down their 50th victory of the season in their 50th anniversary campaign; they did so with a 5-4 shootout victory over the Carolina Hurricanes.
In the process, the Caps clinched the top spot in the Eastern Conference standings with four games remaining.
Ovechkin didn’t add to his total of 895 career goals, but he picked up an assist on the power play and was credited with four hits, and it felt as though he was even more physically involved than that total would indicate.
“Right now, this is the time of year when you have to prepare yourself for big games,” says Ovechkin. “So I tried to set the tone, and I think the boys followed, so that’s good.”
Both teams let two-goal leads slip away in what was a spirited contest that felt a bit like a playoff preview. The Caps got back in the win column, and Carolina’s late comeback to force overtime enabled it to squeeze a point out of an otherwise fallow four-game road trip (0-3-1).
Seconds after they failed to score on an early power play opportunity, the Canes jumped out to a 1-0 lead on Logan Stankoven’s goal at 5:42 of the first period.
Seconds later, Brandon Duhaime took care of some unfinished business from the previous meeting between the two teams, dropping the mitts with Carolina defenseman Jalen Chatfield and giving him good pummeling.
Just over a minute after the bout, Carolina’s Jackson Blake broke in on the Washington net with a step. Caps winger Tom Wilson caught up and checked Blake from behind, shoving the Carolina winger into Caps goalie Charlie Lindgren, who got up slowly and was checked out by Caps director of sports medicine and head athletic trainer Jason Serbus.
While Serbus was making sure that Lindgren was fit to continue, the officials huddled up and watched a replay of the incident, and they determined that Wilson had shoved Blake and the puck into the net, giving Carolina a 2-0 lead at 7:14 of the first.
The Carolina forecheck made life difficult for the Caps over the remainder of the first period, but P-L Dubois stepped up for Washington late in the frame. First, he drew a slashing call on Carolina’s Sean Walker to put the Caps on a power play.
Then, after a lackluster beginning to the man advantage, Dubois drove the net and chipped home an Andrew Mangiapane feed on the rush, cutting the Carolina lead in half at 19:06, just ahead of first intermission. Dubois reached the 20-goal plateau for the fifth time in his career and established a single-season best in points (64) with that goal.
In the second, the Caps found their legs and their game, and they gradually swung the contest around with a strong and assertive second period, and they did it against a team that entered the night with a plus-25 goal differential in the middle period.
Dylan Strome struck on the power play at 10:50 of the second, ripping a shot home from the slot to square the score at 2-2. The Caps started the game with two power-play goals in as many tries, and they’ve now scored with the extra man in six straight games (8-for-16, 50 percent).
Late in the second, Washington struck for a quick pair of goals to gain the lead for the first time. First, Nic Dowd chipped a shot over Frederick Andersen from in tight at 16:51, delivering his career high 14th goal of the season and notching a career best with his 26th point.
“Johnny [Carlson] made a really nice play, getting the puck to middle of the ice, and I actually tried to get it to [Duhaime], and they knocked it down,” recounts Dowd. “And Dewey made a good play, just getting it to the net, and I just crashed the net, too.
“I think with our line especially, we're going to go to get our production within that six, seven feet of the crease; that's where we've been doing it all year. And honestly, it's tough to score from anywhere else, unless you're Alex Ovechkin.”
There’s only one of him.
Just 38 seconds later, Tom Wilson took a feed from Connor McMichael, beat Jaccob Slavin to the net and scored on his own rebound after Andersen stopped his first bid. The Caps carried a 4-2 lead into the third, but they knew the Canes weren’t going away.
Jordan Martinook cut the Caps’ lead in half with a floater from the left point that found purchase behind Lindgren at 4:42 of the third, but the tying tally came late and stung a bit more.
After Ovechkin missed an open net opportunity with Andersen off for an extra attacker, the canes rolled back up the ice and tied the game at 4-4 on a Seth Jarvis goal at 18:15.
Washington couldn’t convert a power play opportunity in overtime, but it prevailed when Dubois was the only skater to score in the skills competition, and Lindgren denied all three Carolina bids for his 19th victory of the season.
Thursday’s win allows the Caps to avenge the only game – of 78 to date – they’ve lost by more than three goals this season, a 5-1 beating in Carolina on April 2. It also allows them to turn the page from the Ovechkin celebration and move on to the matter at hand, which is using these final four games of the regular season to get their overall game playoff ready.
But they can also take a night to celebrate a 50-win season and clinching the regular season Eastern Conference crown.
“Fifty wins in this league, and winning the Eastern Conference in the regular season, that's a huge achievement,” says Caps coach Spencer Carbery. “And it's a lot of hard work and a lot of difficult games. This league is relentless, and it is a grind, and it is unforgiving at times, and our team has done an exceptional job all year long, of staying in the moment.
“And there's a ton of great qualities about our team, but I think a lot of our guys go back to the competitiveness and the bunch of gamers that we have, but that’s 50 wins through the dog days. That's the key in this league is, can you drum up urgency on a Tuesday night in – and I'm not going to name a city – but can you find a way to make that game important for your team? Because it's hard, and guys go through it, and that's what this team does an amazing job of.
“One of the things that they do an amazing job of is understanding the importance of every game inside of these 82, and trying to do everything you can to drum up energy, attention to detail, mental focus, [physicality]. And to win 50 games this year and win the Eastern Conference, it’s a huge accomplishment.”
Notes: Jacob Chychrun was a late scratch because of illness; Dylan McIlrath stepped in for him and logged 12:28 in ice time for the night.
