Caps 5, Flyers 4 (Shootout)
What could have been a lost evening, a missed opportunity, instead turned into a celebration on Tuesday night. The Caps, without star left wing Alex Ovechkin, built a three-goal lead on the road in Philadelphia, against the Eastern Conference’s best team, and then lost it. They fell behind late and then recovered. They scored three times in the shootout and in so doing earned an extra standings point, their third win of an extended road swing and a fourth consecutive Stanley Cup playoff berth.
Check out the details in our game story here. There were plenty in a wild affair. These two teams don’t seem to know how to play any other way. All four meetings between them have needed more than 60 minutes to decide a winner. Philadelphia won twice. Washington won twice.
The Caps have banked six points of a possible eight during this stretch of six games away from Verizon Center. They have just a back-to-back in Ottawa and Montreal over the weekend and then the end of the regular season will – mercifully – be in sight. Washington has won 14 of 17 games overall and is just one point behind the Flyers for the top seed in the Eastern Conference and in a solid spot at No. 2. All that with one star player after another nursing an injury.
“[Catching Philadelphia] will be tough to achieve. We want to continue to play well. We have had a lot of wins in our past stretch and we want to keep that going,” Caps forward Mike Knuble said. “There is always room for improvement, but Philadelphia is a hard team to hold back when they start going. This was a good lesson for us to not stop playing. The lesson to learn is that a team will be able to come back if you start to sit back.”
Marcus Johansson continues to blossom. Nothing shows the confidence of the young 20-year-old better than his game-tying goal with 3:19 to go. He slipped into an open shooting lane and when no Flyers player stepped in to challenge him, Johansson banged his stick on the ice, calling for the pass from 38-year-old teammate Knuble. It found his stick and Johansson ripped home the shot to make it 4-4. He finished with a goal and an assist – as did fellow Swede Nicklas Backstrom, who also scored in the shootout.
“I think we played pretty good, we got the puck deep most times and we worked hard,” Johansson said. “We got the puck to the point and we went to the net and I think that’s when you get your chances rolling and I think we did that through the whole game and, you know, you get goals when you play like that.”
I’m not sure what exactly Matt Hendricks pulled out of his extensive bag o’ shootout moves, but it was effective. We’ve seen him do that before this season, but this was a huge score coming moments after Ville Leino had opened the shootout with a goal. Not sure what exactly Alex Semin did to deserve the No. 1 star – other than record the shootout winner, which was nice. Was it the four-minute penalty? The goal against he was on the ice for?
Maybe it wasn’t the best game for Caps rookie goalie Michal Neuvirth. But he did manage to stop 29 of 33 shots on goal as Philadelphia took over the game for the final 30 minutes. Meanwhile, Flyers rookie goalie Sergei Bobrovsky (six saves) was pulled just 1:22 into the second period after allowing his third goal of the night
That eight-game losing streak earlier in the season seems like a distant memory now. But it’s probably best not to bring it up to Bruce Boudreau anyway. He’s a bit sensitive about any suggestion that his team might actually be surprised to be one point out of the top spot in the Eastern Conference.
“December 1st we were first overall so I’m not marveling. We had an eight-game stretch where we lost, but I bet you don’t know how we lost or the number of games we lost by one,” Boudreau said. “The guys just read that we lost and think were falling apart, but I think Philadelphia has gone through a downturn as well. They have gone through ten game stretches where they have only won two games. I think every team has gone through that, except for Vancouver this year. That doesn’t marvel at me. I knew that we would fight until the end.”
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