Matt Hendricks mockingly shooed reporters away from his locker stall after Wednesday’s 1-0 victory over the Pittsburgh Penguins. What had he done, after all, to contribute to the win? Plenty. Just ask his teammates.
“[Hendricks] was kind of a nuisance all night for them. He was hard to play against tonight,” veteran winger Mike Knuble said. “Whether you had his fight in the first period and then he’s physical and buzzing around and almost made the game 2-0 there [in the third period] and had a tremendous shift. It was really good because it got the building into it. It helped the bench – you see a guy battling and trying his best. He doesn’t get a ton of ice time all the time, but he was out there and feeling it, feeling the flow a little bit. He was fun to watch tonight.”
Hendricks fought Penguins forward Craig Adams at 2:19 of the first period – though while a good scrap it didn’t really alter the flow of the game much. The contest took a sleepy turn for a while there with Pittsburgh coming off a game last night against the Ottawa Senators and the Caps just back from a brief two-game road trip to California.
“It’s huge. When Hendy makes that good fight for us it just pumps the guys up,” Washington forward Jason Chimera said. “He’s a guy that doesn’t show up on the score sheet too often, but he’s one of those guys that brings it every night. Sometimes he doesn’t play as much as he should. You can’t put a price on those guys. They should have had a couple on that shift. But they continued to cycle the puck. Hendy hit the post and [Perreault] had a good couple whacks out there.”
But a shift early in the third period had the desired effect. Hendricks had already hit the right goal post at 3:03 of the third on his first shift. That’s the second time in three games he’s rung iron. Next time out he and linemates Jay Beagle and Mathieu Perreault kept the Penguins hemmed into their own zone for just under a minute. They produced three quality shots on goal and their physical play made life difficult for the Pittsburgh.
“I think they were tired, first off. And then I think we got our opportunities. We had some shots,” Hendricks said. “You hem a team in there, especially playing back-to-back nights, it’s tough. I’ve been there. It’s tough to move your legs. It’s tough to get the puck out. I thought we had some energy there, took advantage of it.”
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