Capitals rally for shootout win over Canucks
Visitors roar back from four-goal deficit for shootout win in entertaining affair
Teams that take themselves seriously put the dagger into tired opponents, no matter how good the opposition may be.
The Washington Capitals gave a lesson in how you can never leave a team for dead, as they came back from a 5-1 deficit to send the game to a shootout in an entertaining affair against the Vancouver Canucks on Friday night at Rogers Arena.
The Capitals eventually won the game 6-5 in a shootout, with Nicklas Backstrom notching the winner.
Meanwhile, the Canucks had entered the third period with a deserved 5-2 lead, but the Capitals scored three goals, partly powered by luck, in the opening eight minutes of the frame to even things up.
After a shaky start, the home team had dominated the affair for much of the game’s opening two periods, so to lose the lead in the third was bittersweet, as entertaining as the game may have been.
Fans won’t complain about getting to see 10 goals in a game.
The Canucks got two goals from Tim Schaller and singles from Brock Boeser, Elias Pettersson and Jake Virtanen, while the Capitals got a pair of goals from Evgeny Kuznetsov and another deuce from Michal Kempny and a single tally from Lars Eller.
Here’s what we learned...
WIZ KID
Perhaps no play better summed up the game than the rush Quinn Hughes took up the ice to set up the Boeser goal.
The defenceman showed more than once the effect his skating talents have. He creates space in tight quarters — witness the buttonhook he pulled off, inches inside the blue line to keep an attacking sequence alive halfway through the second period, and he also put defenders on their back feet, like he did in the moments before Boeser tallied.
On a power play, he flew into the zone wide on the left, drawing penalty killers to him, opening up a gap down Broadway for him to flip the puck into, where Boeser collected the disc and with no hesitation shot the puck past Caps goalie Ilya Samsonov.
Hughes is also a tough kid: last season he acknowledged that teams have taken runs at him his whole life, and for the first time this season, a team consistently went out of their way to make him feel their presence, as the Capitals finished their checks across the board, but especially when Hughes was on the puck.
Jakub Vrana, for example, gave Hughes a shot in the third period, not long after the Washington forward rang a shot off the crossbar behind Jacob Markstrom.
Hughes didn’t flinch.
MOMENTS OF MESSINESS
It’s not often you see Chris Tanev make a terrible play, but the sequence which ended with a goal for Kuznetsov began with Tanev being unable to clear the puck, instead turning the puck over at the blue line.
Markstrom made a fabulous save off Vrana but the Canucks still couldn’t control the puck to exit the zone and it was then Micheal Ferland who couldn’t find either Bo Horvat or Virtanen on a breakout, instead turning the puck over to Vrana who fed Kuznetsov down low, the smooth Russian finding the twine.
The Capitals are cup contenders for many reasons, but giving no quarter off turnovers is one of them.
The Canucks, though, did find their defensive groove for the succeeding 37 minutes.
The Capitals were playing three games in four nights and for long stretches looked like, as the Canucks buzzed around the offensive zone and were deserving of their 5-1 lead, with time ticking down on the second frame.
But Kuznetsov potted his second of the game with fractions of a second left in the second period — he found himself left unchecked in the slot and fired the puck home past Markstrom — Capitals came roaring out of the gate in the third and found three goals because of their aggression, the first a shorthanded effort by Eller after his linemate Garnet Hathaway forced a turnover and fed the Norwegian centre on Markstrom’s doorstep.
Moments later, Kempny fired a slap shot from out by the blue line and the puck eluded multiple legs on its flight toward the net; Markstrom never found the puck either.
The goal brought the visitors within one.
The comeback was complete when Kempny blasted home a
one-timer from out near the blue line. The Canucks were in true disarray at that point.
The latter two goals were perhaps unlucky; how often do point shots make their way through like that?
REMEMBER THE GREAT ONE
“You miss 100 per cent of the shots you don’t take,” Wayne Gretzky once said his dad taught him.
Schaller proved the point on a first-period penalty kill, when he fired the puck off the side boards.
The shot eluded Washington goalie Samsonov.
He half-proved the point a period later when, after forcing a turnover off John Carlson on the side boards, he whacked the puck out of mid air, just hoping to get it on net. Mission accomplished. Goal two for him, goal four for team.
QUICK HANDS
On replay, it was pretty amazing to see Pettersson skating around, locked and loaded for a one-timed snap shot, only for him to put his stick down the ice for the quickest of moments, lifting a loose puck over Samsonov’s glove, into the top corner of the net.
It was a similar story for Virtanen, who scored just over a minute after Schaller’s second of the game.
Virtanen drove to the slot before he took a nice pass from Horvat out of the corner and fired a wrist shot over Samsonov’s glove.
SHORT PASSES
Beyond the fact the Capitals love sending a forward toward the opposing blue line the moment they get gain control of the puck — no matter where on the ice — they are also masters of the short pass, with teammates constantly finding small gaps off the puck carrier.
It’s a very effective method in keeping defenders on their back foot.