Winger’s two goals lead Washington to 4-1 victory over Rangers The mandate was simple for the Capitals. No matter what, they could not allow the New York Rangers to score the first goal of Wednesday night’s contest at Verizon Center.
In each of its previous two games – both losses – Washington found itself hopelessly behind before denting the scoreboard. And New York itself was a formidable 17-1-1 when registering the first goal of a game this season. Those long odds proved irrelevant, however, when Marcus Johansson scored for the Caps early in the first period. Teammate Alex Semin made sure that lead held with a pair of tallies later in an eventual 4-1 victory.
It was the first multi-goal game of the season for Semin, who now has nine total. Troy Brouwer also scored for the Caps (18-15-2, 38 points), who jumped back into 10th place in the Eastern Conference by beating a Rangers club (22-9-4, 48 points) that entered the day atop the standings. In its previous two games Washington had fallen behind New Jersey 3-0 and Buffalo 4-0. That trend had to stop immediately.
“We’ve had problems, I’d imagine, in every period. But I think the biggest thing for us was the start of the game after the Buffalo game [Monday] and the way we’ve been playing.” said forward Jeff Halpern. “When you’re playing a team that’s tops in your conference you want to make sure you’re getting off to a good start. And we wanted to be able to dictate a little bit of the game as opposed to being on our heels like we have been.”
Goalie Tomas Vokoun stopped 31 of 32 shots in his first start since an ugly 5-1 loss at home to Philadelphia on Dec. 13. Michal Neuvirth had earned the nod in the previous five games with Vokoun coming on in relief early in that 4-2 loss to the Sabres on Monday.
“Obviously, you’re not sure what you’re going to get when you’re coming off a layoff like that,” Vokoun said. “But you can’t forget playing in two weeks. I was just trying to play the right way and hope the guys win the game.”
Washington took a 1-0 lead at 8 minutes, 18 seconds of the first period when Johansson scored on a rebound attempt after a Halpern shot off the rush on the right wing. That was the result of a bad turnover from Rangers defenseman Michael Del Zotto.
New York answered in its own inimitable style. Captain Ryan Callahan blocked John Carlson’s point shot and the Caps defenseman slipped to the ice as he tried to chase it down. Brandon Dubinsky was off to the races. A 2-on-0 break became a 2-on-1 as Dennis Wideman took away the pass option. But Dubinsky was unfazed. He whipped the puck past a frozen Vokoun to tie the game at 1-1 with 2:44 left in the period.
Washington should have regained the lead on a late power play. Brouwer was clipped up high and screamed at the referee, who missed the incident. Moments later Brouwer whiffed on a perfect pass from Johansson with the open goal yawning and goalie Martin Biron (19 saves, 23 shots) way out of position.
In the second period the Caps scored twice. This time Brouwer and Halpern drove to the front of the net after an extended push in the offensive zone. Carlson’s point shot deflected off Brouwer and in for a 2-1 lead at 10:24. It was his 10th goal of the year. Just 2:38 later, Alex Ovechkin knocked the puck away from Rangers center Brad Richards trying to enter the offensive zone. Nicklas Backstrom jumped on it and flung a stretch pass up ice to a streaking Semin, who buried the backhander over Biron for a 3-1 advantage.
“That’s not us. We usually take care of the puck,” Rangers forward Brian Boyle said. “Just mistakes and stuff trying to make plays. Sometimes things like that happen. We wanted to come back. We did have chances. But we just wanted to bury them. If we make those mistakes we’ve been able to come back from them and tonight we weren’t.”
Semin added to his haul after a fine cross-ice feed from Ovechkin. He ripped a shot from the right wing by Biron with 2:35 left to play. Washington’s top line of Semin, Backstrom and Ovechkin combined for five points. The Caps killed off all five Rangers’ power-play chances – though Callahan though he had a man-advantage goal in the third period before a replay review showed he intentionally kicked the puck into the net and it was waved off by officials.
“I thought we played really well with the lead,” Brouwer said. “We were able to create turnovers, not give [New York] too much. Our penalty kill was phenomenal tonight as well, which was a big help, especially when we took a couple untimely penalties. So collectively it came together well, plus [Vokoun] had a great bounce back game.”
