The Washington Capitals defeated the Utah Hockey Club in their first meeting ever between the teams in Salt Lake City
The Washington Capitals notched a 6-2 win to complete the three game sweep out west with a win over the Utah Hockey Club as red clad Caps fans took over. The win improves their record to 13-4-1 to vault into first place in the Metropolitan Division. It improved their record to 3-1-0 in the second game in back to backs this season.
In additon, the Caps are 6-2-0 on the road and a perfect 7-0-0 against Western Conference opponents.
Jack McBain would strike first for the Hockey Club based in Utah at 3:05. Dylan Strome answered with a goal at 7:46 with a wrap around shot to tie the game. 10 seconds later Nic Dowd gave the Caps the lead off the set ups from Brandon Duhaime and Taylor Raddysh.
Alex Ovechkin would then strike on a snap shot from the office at 11:05 off a feed from Pierre-Luc Dubois. 3-1 would be the score after one with Utah leading in shots 11-8.
At 5:38 in the second Ovechkin struck on the power play goal on a slapshot off assists from John Carlson and Dylan Strome to up his goal total to 15 to lead the NHL in goals scored. He is doing all of this at 39 years old and he is now 26 away from Wayne Gretzky's all time goals record.
At 11:44 Nick Bjugstad would get one back. 4-2 would be the score after two with the Caps leading in shots 11-8 in the middle stanza.
At 7:30 of the third period Brandon Duhaime would strike for his fourth goal of the season at 7:30 on a wrister assisted by Trevor van Riemsdyk and Lars Eller. At 9:56 Aliaksei Protas made it a 6-2 game as Andrew Mangiapane would set it up for Pro's seventh of the season.
That's all good news but the bad news is before those two goals in the third period, Ovechkin took a hit from McBain that look unintentional based on the replay.
"I just liked our third. I knew our second wasn't great. We just had to protect the two goal lead," Capitals coach Spencer Carbery told the media in Utah right after the game. So not much of an update but Alan May did say on Capitals Postgame Live on Monumental Sports Network 2 that there SHOULD be a Tuesday update with the team off from practice and flying back from the west coast road trip.
Charlie Lindgren would finish with 24 saves on 26 shots for a .923 save percentage to improve his record to 9-5-0 with a 2.59 goals against average and a .900 save percentage on the season. Next up for the Caps is a home rematch with the Colorado Avalanche on Thursday night.
