Caps beat Wings 4 3 at OT

Caps beat Wings 4-3 at OT

Sports News / By /

The Washington Capitals hosted a promising game against the Detroit Red Wings on Monday night. We expected to celebrate a star; Little did we know the star would be Nic Dowd.

David Perron raised a backhander to beat Charlie Lindgren and put Detroit on the board first. The Wings made it 2-0 from Oskar Sundqvist with a flawless pass from Jonatan Berggren (a fun name that definitely didn’t need to be double-checked).

Nic Dowd scored twice in the second period. Eleven seconds apart.

Lucas Raymond restored Detroit’s lead five minutes into the third period, but Erik Gustafsson – the Dynamo – tied it shortly after. That got us overtime.

Dmitry Orlov won it in overtime!

win caps!

  • Washington absolutely thrashed Detroit in possession. The puck was always on a Caps player’s stick except when it wasn’t, and then it was on a scary rush attack against Charlie Lindgren. The Wings are a growing team and they’re a bit top-heavy, but hell, they can create chances quickly.
  • Nick Dowd, my favorite player of the year! He scored two goals, sixth and seventh, eleven seconds apart. His first goal: an absolute game of skill with the curl and drag. His second: an opportunistic tip. He’s on track to break his season record of 11. A lot of people seem to think that Hathaway is carrying the weight in this pairing. I think Dowd is special.
  • There was some controversy after Dowd’s second goal, with the Wings apparently trying to work their way out of it with a lawyer. The appeal didn’t work, and a bit of Donnybrook followed on the next shift as Mantha tried to take on three Wings players alone, like my Genji, while I tried to keep him healed as Ana. Oh, that’s an Overwatch reference, by the way.
  • Yevgeny Kuznetsov temporarily left the game with seven minutes to go in the third. He nursed his shoulder after taking a hit (crosscheck? elbow). Moritz Seider. Kuznetsov has had a strange season so far – just one goal in five against five, but he’s still been a great playmaker: Elite tier on primary assists. Even though it feels like he’s having an off-season, the team desperately needs him. Kuznetsov returned for extra time.
  • I wouldn’t like to Lars Eller execute a hook penalty 190 feet from his own net. Sundqvist scored. Eller broke up again with a nice pass Eric Gustafsson in the third.
  • Gustafsson has been the subject of intense, heated, protracted, venomous, and sometimes violent debates in the RMNB Discord. This player, who I couldn’t care less about in September, is now a top D-Boy pair and a crucial part of their offense-first-maybe-defense-later-if-it-is-not-too-much-problems -Setting. I love that, of course, and people interested in “good” and “normal” hockey don’t.
  • Alex Ovechkin In the second period he hit the post on the power play, in the third period he did it again. A rung on the post doesn’t count as a shot on goal, so he didn’t even count towards his other record streak: most shots on goal of all time, where he trails Ray Bourque by single digits.
  • Fans at Capital One Arena chanted “Ovi! Ovi! Ovi!” during a Power Play. I do not like it. I find that presumptuous – like the power play is Ovechkin’s goal factory smaller than it really is.

Another great game. We were whining about the quality of the caps as an entertainment product. After weeks of good games – many of them win no less – this complaint goes into the drawer. Not sure if the caps are any good anymore (a convo for another day) but for now they’re fun. And that’s a lot.

See you Thursday for a roadie in Ottawa.

Headline photo: @Senorferrrree