The night began with a ceremony honoring the team’s sage veteran. It ended with a reminder that when their young stars are clicking the Capitals remain a formidable team.
Alex Ovechkin, Alexander Semin and Nicklas Backstrom scored goals in the same game for the first time since Oct. 30, 2010, and made a winner of Mike Knuble, who was playing in his 1,000th career NHL game. Washington beat the Nashville Predators 4-1 at Verizon Center on Tuesday night in its most complete performance since new coach Dale Hunter took over Nov. 28.
Recommended Stories
The Caps improved to 17-14-1 with 35 standings points in the Eastern Conference and are 5-3 over their last eight games. Nashville fell to 17-12-4 and had its string of 10 consecutive one-goal games snapped. That was two shy of the NHL record. The Predators had won seven of those 10.
“We want to dictate our game, and we want to dictate our style in this system,” Ovechkin said. “So it was pretty cool. I think all the team played together, played hard and we deserved to win.”
Ovechkin opened the scoring at 7 minutes, 42 seconds of the first period. He took a stretch pass from teammate Karl Alzner, used a screen of sorts from the linesman to dip around Nashville defenseman Jonathon Blum and then powered towards the goal, beating goalie Anders Lindback (19 saves, 23 shots). That was Ovechkin’s 11th goal of the season and his third in six games.
At 15:51, Backstrom put Washington up 2-0. He skated around the net for a wrap-around attempt and stuffed the puck under Lindback’s pads for his 12th goal. That broke a three-way tie for the team lead with Ovechkin and Jason Chimera.
Washington made it through the second period unscathed despite taking three penalties. That killed any offensive flow the Caps might have generated in that period, but they still killed all five Nashville power-play opportunities and are 40-for-45 since a Nov. 21 win over Phoenix.
But some missed opportunities, including Troy Brouwer ringing a puck off the left post in the second period, caught up to them in the third. Nashville trimmed the lead to 2-1 when Sergei Kostitsyn beat goalie Michal Neuvirth (20 saves, 21 shots). That rush up ice was triggered by a Semin turnover in the neutral zone.
Semin more than made up for that miscue — and an earlier boarding penalty in the second period — when he skated onto a drop pass from teammate Marcus Johansson and ripped a shot into the top corner at 10:21 of the third to restore Washington’s two-goal advantage at 3-1. Later, Brouwer tipped home a Dennis Wideman shot on the power play with 6:14 left to seal it.
“Just a great win all around,” said Knuble, who was presented a silver hockey stick, a jet ski and a crystal ball in commemoration of his 1,000th NHL game during a pregame ceremony. “That’s what we should be doing on a more consistent basis. We intend to.”
