Ovechkin, Holtby play familiar roles
WASHINGTON — The Washington Capitals turned the clock back to June, and had they played a Game 6 in the Stanley Cup finals against the Vegas Golden Knights, it might have gone something like Wednesday night. Goaltender Braden Holtby was sharp. Evgeny Kuznetsov was the best player on the ice. Alex Ovechkin was still the top goal-scorer.
It’s a new season, and yet, the Capitals are carrying on very much the same quality of play as the last time they shared the ice with the Golden Knights. In an early season title rematch, Washington won, 5-2, thanks to the same players who starred in the postseason four months ago, when the Capitals won Game 5 of the Stanley Cup finals in Vegas’s T-Mobile Arena. Kuznetsov finished four points. Ovechkin scored two goals. Holtby made 29 saves.
Washington hoisted the trophy in Vegas and partied in the Golden Knights’ city. The banner now hangs proudly in Capital One Arena, on the side of the visiting bench. The Capitals expected all of that would fuel the Golden Knights, that they would want some small bit of revenge on Wednesday night.
But they downplayed that narrative. Goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury acknowledged that if he had to choose between starting against Washington on Wednesday or against Pittsburgh, his former team, tonight, he wanted the Capitals. But other Vegas players said they’d moved on from last season and any disappointment felt from falling just short of a championship.
“We want to win because we want two points,” Golden Knights coach Gerard Gallant said. “It has nothing to do with what happened last year in the playoffs.”
The Capitals had a similar approach. In preparation for this game, the team watched film from the teams’ Stanley Cup finals series, but outside of a clip featuring captain Alex Ovechkin’s hair looking disheveled that drew some laughs, there was nothing particularly out of the ordinary about the video session. Both teams just want to get back to that stage.
But there was some déjà vu on Wednesday night. The puck from “The Save,” when Holtby lunged his stick across an empty expanse of net to improbably stop an Alex Tuch shot in Game 2 of the Stanley Cup finals, is displayed on a wall in Capital OneArena. Holtby insists “TheSave” was mostly luck, but he similarly stymied the Golden Knights in the rematch. He quietly displayed his technique with several point-blank saves – and he also caught a few breaks with Vegas ringing three shots off the post. He stopped 19 of the 20 shots he saw through two periods, very much carrying over his playoff form.
Kuznetsov did, too. The postseason’s leading scorer, Kuznetsov notched the first goal of the game by redirecting Nicklas Backstrom’s pass from the half wall onapower play in the last minute of the first frame. On a third period power play, Backstrom scored on a similar play when Kuznetsov found him for a backdoor tap in. Tonight, 7 TV: NBCSWA Radio: 106.7 FM