On this lovely Saturday afternoon the Capitals took on the NY Rangers in an exciting game.
The Rangers got on the board first via a beer league type blunder by Logan Thompson who took the puck and threw it right in the middle of both circles to a wide open Chris Kreider who scored the easiest goal he will get all season 1-0 bad guys.
The Caps evened the score at 1 a piece on the power-play after a scramble the puck found Jakob Chychrun who ripped it on net but was saved, but the rebound was right there for the taking where Dylan Strome finished it home.
The Caps power-play seems to be getting back to the old ways with now a PP goal in 6 of their last 7 games.
Early into the 2nd the Caps took the lead off a beautiful tip by Eller off a nice feed to the net by Fehervary to make it 2-1 Caps.
Then Nic Dowd and Andrew Mangiapane linked up with a great pass from Dowder to a crashing Mangi who smacked it home from his knee to extend the lead 3-1 Caps.
After a bad turnover by Ovechkin gave it right to Sam Carrick who beat Thompson to shrink the lead to 1 making it 3-2 Caps.
The Capitals headed back on the power-play where Strome found a wide open McMichael for a nice one touch deflection to make it 4-2 in favor of the home team.
Strome tallied his team leading 31st assist. McMichael is one goal away from matching his single season career high in goals he now has 17 on the season which makes him 2nd on the team.
With the score 4-2 going into the 3rd period the Rangers got back within one on a breakaway by Filip Chytil who went roof-job on LT who couldn’t make the save, 4-3 Caps.
With around 9 minutes left the Caps took a faceoff from the right circle where the Rangers won the faceoff but couldnt corral the puck where a lurking Ovi gathered the puck on the backhand and snuck it under the Ranger goalie’s right pad, 5-3 Caps.
This was Ovi’s 872 of his career and is now 23 goals away from Gretzky. He is just not human and knows how to till find the back of the net and isn’t slowing down! He has 4 goals in his 5 games since returning.
The worthless Mika makes it a one goal game again off some lazy defense, but still a goal LT needs to save. He definitely didn’t have his best performance today, 5-4 Caps.
The Capitals quickly anwser back with one of their on via a clapper by Pierre-Luc Dubois who drew iron but was cleaned up by Protas who backhanded it into the net between his own legs, 6-4 Caps.
Tom Wilson put a fork in it with the empty netter finishing the game with the final of 7-4 in favor of the boys in red.
Anytime we can beat the Rangers is a good day, but this one was a rollercoaster with goals galore but with every goal we had the Rangers answered almost right away. To be fair we gave them two goals with the LT and Ovi turnover.
Besides those two bonehead mistakes the Caps were pretty sloppy defensivly especially in the first half of the game. Glad we were able to take a win when LT wasn’t at his best, but these are the type of games you have to win to make a playoff run when the team doesn’t bring their A game.
That goes with taking advantage of the power-play opportunities which we have of late.
The Capitals will now head up to face a struggling Buffalo team who is 3-6-1 in their last 10, but the Caps are famous to playing down to their competition so lets hope they change that mentality and crush this bad team.
The Morning Skate 