The Washington Capitals soundly downed the Anaheim Ducks on Tuesday night. If they hadn’t, I’d be upset, but they did, so this is going to be a chill game recap.
Our first goal belonged to Brandon Duhaime, last to touch the puck after Jakob Chychrun made a strong drive towards the net. John Carlson chopped down the puck during a broken play to scored an unassisted goal that did NOT get overturned. The lone goal of the second period belonged to Ethen Frank, who is on a roll. No goals in the third, which means no goals at all for Anaheim, which means…
Caps win in a 3-0 shutout! First of the season!
- We’ve been following, aghast, Washington’s declining offense over the past couple weeks. Then they had 30 attempts and 12 on goal in the first period. Good progress, sure, but also: it’s the Anaheim Ducks, y’all.
- Offense cooled in the second and third periods as this turned into a prevent game.
- Pat, banished from RMNB, texted me to say he did not like the Ducks uniforms. He must not have read last recap, where we all agreed that all pro sports aesthetics is bad. It’s like the David Foster Wallace bit about “this is water,” except it’s “this is a garish combination of over-saturated colors strategically chosen by marketing agencies to look obnoxious on your suspiciously underpriced 4K television which is listening to everything you say and transmitting directly into Jeff Bezos’s Sandevistan in JSON blob format.”
- Ethen Frank, in his third NHL game, scored his second NHL goal. He’s on a three-game streak. He’s an NHL player. His goal tonight showed the kind of patience and poise I sure as hell wouldn’t have if I was in my first NHL call-up. (Maybe his last?)
- The good people at Capitals PR shared that the last Caps player to score a point in all of his first three games was former nephew, Andre Burakovsky.
- Pierre-Luc Dubois got the assist on the Frank goal. Spencer Carbery seems to be sprinkling PLD everywhere lately, adding umami flavor to the first line in particular.
- Ryan Strome, Dylan’s big brother, centered the top line for the Ducks. The Strome brothers met for the first faceoff of each period. That was pretty cute. Aileen said they should have dropped gloves and punched each other. That’s antisocial. I don’t know what’s going on with Aileen lately. Worrying.
- Since Lindgren got bonked, all the focus has been on Caps goaltender Logan Thompson. I wrote about it at length this morning. Welp, Tuesday he recorded his first shutout of the season and his first since February 19 of last year. He didn’t need to be perfect tonight, but he was. Connor Hellebuyck is checking his rear-view mirrors just like Peter is checking the spelling of Hellebuyck.
Thank you, Ducks. Thank you, LT. Someone get Ethen Frank a townhouse in Old Town.
Sens on Thursday.
