Caps 5, Oilers 0
So this is what second place feels like. It’s been a while since the Caps have held the No. 2 seed in the Eastern Conference. They do now after a 5-0 the win over the Oilers. Check out the major details in our game story here.
Washington is now 38-20-10 with 86 points. That is just two behind No. 1 seed Philadelphia for the conference lead. It also remained two points ahead of Tampa Bay (38-21-8, 4 points) for first place in the Southeast Division after the Lightning pulled out a win over Chicago. The Caps have won six in a row, tying a season high set first from Oct. 30 to Nov. 11.
Alex Ovechkin scored a pair of goals. Eric Fehr did the same on his return from 22 games on the shelf with a shoulder injury. Alex Semin added another one. All in all a pretty nice night.
Fehr had said in recent days he feels in great condition thanks to the off-ice work he’s done while recuperating. But coach Bruce Boudreau also put him on notice at the morning skate: There is no time to shake off the rust. Not with a plethora of wingers fighting for ice time. Fehr needed to show something right away. And he did exactly that.
“It’s not the time of year [to play rusty],” Boudreau said. “[Fehr] wants to come back and pretty soon [Nicklas Backstrom] will be back and you have to make decisions. So I think every player is out there trying to play their best at this time because we are fairly deep and they want the ice time.”
The Caps hadn’t scored five goals at Verizon Center – an almost daily occurrence last season – since a Dec. 21 win over New Jersey. They last scored more than five goals in any game on Feb. 16 at Anaheim, a 7-6 victory. They last won by more than a single goal on Feb. 6 against the Penguins. Needless to say – winning with a cushion was a breath of fresh air.
Another milestone to go with Ovechkin’s 600th point and Jason Arnott’s 900th: Defenseman Dennis Wideman collected his 200th career NHL point. Ovechkin now ranks third all time in franchise points in just his sixth season. His hustle set up his second goal after he swiped the puck from Edmonton defenseman Kurtis Foster to keep it in the offensive zone. That set up a 2-on-0 break with Marcus Johansson. They made four separate passes back and forth with Ovechkin finishing the play for his 27th goal of the year. Johansson worried before the game that he and Ovechkin’s styles are a little too similar – both need the puck to be effective. But the 20-year-old rookie held his own without Backstrom in the lineup for the first time since he arrived in Washington in 2007.
“What I thought was good was that Marcus played his game,” Boudreau said. “Usually young guys get with Alex and they feel obligated every time they touch the puck to give it to him and instead Marcus played the way he plays and Alex played off him.”
All three Caps rookie goalies have now recorded a shutout. Braden Holtby didn’t have a ton of work until the very end of the game when the Oilers were firing shots on him to try and end the shut out. Didn’t happen. Holtby finished with 22 saves and has now stopped 130 of the last 133 shots thrown his way in his last five NHL games.
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