The Washington Capitals defeated the Red Wings in convincing fashion on Tuesday night. It was a fast-paced, penalty-free game, and the Caps lit the lamp late.
Dylan Strome scored first, an outside shot through traffic after some strong cycle play. Another Dylan, Larkin this time, tied it six minutes later with a very fast shot off a very fast rebound.
The second period contained no goals, but it went by in a jiff, so fine.
Pierre-Luc Dubois put the Caps back in the lead in the third, a solo rush attempt with a perfect release, marred only slightly by the lack of Ovi involvement. Aliaksei Protas set up Tom Wilson for the 30th goal of his season. Finally, Connor McMichael crashed the net to catch Ovechkin’s pass and make it 4-1.
Caps win!
- A slight shake-up to lines tonight: Pierre-Luc Dubois was pivot to Alex Ovechkin on the top line. If I were trying to juice Ovi’s offense on the way to the record, I’d try that too. PLD’s been the team’s best skater all season. When it came time to deliver, Dubois did, just – ya know – not with Ovi.
- That also left the second line to Connor McMichael, Dylan Strome, and Tom Wilson – Washington’s best line of the night and scorers of a nifty goal on which neither McM nor Wilson got credited with an assist despite being perfectly opaque screens.
- After a stretch from mid-December to the end of January with one goal in 19 games, Dylan Strome now has four goals in his last five.
- It was a speedy second period — exactly thirty minutes long, which is about seven minutes faster than usual. I ran that data myself. I could have been reading the JFK Files, but I wanted to provide the helpful context that the fastest periods take about 27 minutes and the longest take about 50, and average is 36:48, which was also the length of the first period. I don’t, you guys. I am better when more dumb stuff happens in a the game.
- No penalties. Odd.
- Tom Wilson has become a 30-goal scorer for the first time. This will drive fans of other clubs nuts, and it elevates my preseason prediction from bad to pathetic, but for the man himself it’s vindication. He’s been on a hero’s journey. I’ve been in conversations lately about Matt Rempe, where people compare him to Wilson. That was never an apt comparison even in Wilson’s early seasons, when his talent was hidden by his usage. From my review of that first year:
Tom Wilson was given very little ice time, astonishingly weak linemates, and incentives to facepunch instead of playing actual hockey. If you were devising an evil scheme to ruin a talented young hockey player, you would do all of this and then you’d probably sweep the leg.
To my untrained eyes Wilson has unusually strong skating ability for a young player the size of a Chevy Tahoe and underrated stick skill. Yet Oates had him chasing pucks and cycling in futility for all of 7 or 8 shifts a night. Wilson got virtually no power play ice time (despite scoring his first NHL goal on the PP– though Ovi kinda banked it off him) and basically never cracked the top six.
- Now, just eleven short years later, he’s a top-liner on the best team in the conference, recording 30 goals with weeks left in the season. Bravo. You’ve come a long way, baby.
- According to HockeyViz, prior to tonight’s game the Caps had a 13 percent chance of playing the Red Wings in the first round of the playoffs. I’d like that – mostly – though the romantic in me is stirred by the idea of a Caps-Rangers reunion.
It was a swift and well-played game by the Caps, if not overly exciting, until they flipped that switch they all had implanted in their Neuralinks and went goal-crazy in the third. I loved it.
On Thursday the Caps will host the Philadelphia Flyers, 2-7-1 in their last ten games, outscored 38 goals to 16 in that same stretch, worst in the league. They’ll face winners of their last eight games, with Alex Ovechkin, ready for game 69.
