The Washington Capitals met the lowly Buffalo Sabres for the final time this season on Sunday. The Sabres are the Eastern Conference’s worst team, coming into play trailing the conference-leading Caps by 37 standings points.
Jakob Chychrun put the Capitals in front after pounding home an Alex Ovechkin rebound. Tage Thompson tied the game up at the back post with the Sabres on a power play. Ryan McLeod put Buffalo in front early in the second. Chychrun potted his second of the game to tie things back up. Alex Tuch and Sam Lafferty scored back-to-back goals to put the Sabres up two heading into the third period.
Aliaksei Protas kicked the third off with a shorthanded goal. Thompson and Jack Quinn responded for the Sabres with two more. Ovechkin deflected home his 37th of the season and then set up another for Pierre-Luc Dubois. Tuch grabbed another to cut the comeback bid off, and Peyton Krebs notched an empty-netter.
Sabres beat Capitals 8-5.
- The Capitals controlled play in the first but didn’t create enough offense to really test James Reimer. Tom Wilson had the best five-on-five chance of the first frame after Martin Fehervary fed him on an odd-man rush. Wilson couldn’t lift the puck over Reimer’s pads. John Carlson was furious with the penalty called that led to Thompson’s goal, and he seemed to have a point.
- Jakob Chychrun has changed his goal song to “Bandz a Make Her Dance” in honor of the pregame tunnel ritual he has with Alex Ovechkin. I am thrilled with the change because he previous song, “You Say” by Lauren Daigle, was perhaps the worst choice in goal song in the history of goal songs. He scored twice in the game, giving him 20 goals on the season.
- The Capitals traded Beck Malenstyn to the Sabres at last year’s NHL Draft and used the second-round pick they received to select Cole Hutson. Hutson, a defender, led all NCAA freshmen in scoring at Boston University and has six points (2g, 4a) through his first two NCAA Tournament games. Love everything about that.
- The Capitals dominated possession in the second period but couldn’t get a save when they needed it from their goaltender. Buffalo also did a great job keeping the Caps to the outside so a lot of their possession didn’t lead to much in terms of scoring chances. Not a fun period to watch.
- Logan Thompson is weirdly poor against the Sabres in his career, and that definitely continued Sunday. Coming into the game, he was 2-2 against them with a 4.28 goals-against average and a .855 save percentage. The only teams he had a worse save percentage against were the Utah Hockey Club (.852) and Carolina Hurricanes (.793), against whom he has only played once each.
- The goal drought on the power play ends at 10 games after Pierre-Luc Dubois deflected an Ovechkin shot. I still didn’t love how it looked overall, and we are past the “not too worried” phase. The playoffs are right around the corner. Need to get moving.
- I have to use one of these recap bullets to welcome back Craig Laughlin. Let’s go, Locker!
- Aliaksei Protas hit the 30-goal mark with his shorthanded goal at the beginning of the third period. This is your reminder that he came into this season with 13 career goals in 169 games.
- Alex Ovechkin scored career goal number 890. He is just four goals away from tying Gretzky and five goals away from sole possession of the record. Folks, we are seriously getting down to the wire with this thing.
- The Capitals have now lost three games in a row for just the second time this season.
The Capitals are finished with March and will be back in action on April 1 in Boston against the Bruins. The last month of the regular season cometh, folks.
