The Washington Capitals and Ottawa Senators met for the first time this season on Saturday night. After celebrating captain Alex Ovechkin playing in his 1,500th career NHL game, the Capitals tried to take both games of their back-to-back with travel.
Dylan Cozens, a noted Caps killer, opened the scoring for the Senators. Shane Pinto made it 2-0 after he was pushed into Lindgren by Jakob Chychrun with the puck. Make it four after Cozens and Nick Cousins added two more. Drake Batherson scored in the early moments of the third period.
Trevor van Riemsdyk ruined Linus Ullmark’s shutout bid with a net drive. Thomas Chabot for a touchdown and Batherson for the extra point.
Senators beat Capitals 7-1.
- The Capitals were not ready to play when the game started. Ottawa controlled the majority of the first period, creating six five-on-five high-danger chances and heading into the first intermission up one. Without some heroics from Charlie Lindgren, the Caps are probably down three or four after 20 minutes. They didn’t have a shot on goal until John Carlson threw a clearance on net about eight minutes into the game.
- Major congratulations to the GOAT, Alex Ovechkin, for game number 1,500. May there be many more to come, especially in the Screagle sweater.
- The Capitals had two significant injury scares in the first period. Matt Roy was bloodied by a puck to the face, but ultimately returned. Dylan Strome needed help off the ice after a collision with the boards on a power play, returned, but then left again at the end of the period. He was then ruled out of the rest of the game. Terrifying. Let’s hope he’s alright.
- Yeah, not much you can say about that second period. The Capitals just had zero life in this game. Call it a schedule loss if you will, but I think they were an extra level of bad on top of that.
- I have zero idea how the Caps end up on the penalty kill after that behind-the-net scuffle. Linus Ullmark not only crosses center ice but also comes down behind Charlie Lindgren’s net and starts throwing punches with his mask on. He doesn’t get called for roughing. The Caps were bad in this game, but the officials — namely Kelly Sutherland (typical) — were terrible as well.
- The Senators left the second period up 19-6 in shots on goal. Averaging three shots a period cannot happen, no matter how tired you are. Let’s hope tomorrow’s day off puts some fuel back into their tanks.
- The second I saw the Capitals challenge Shane Pinto’s goal, I knew what was coming. Personally, I don’t think Pinto made enough of an effort to avoid crashing into Lindgren, with or without Jakob Chychrun’s help. But the NHL has rules that make no sense, and calls are either way too black-and-white or way too open to interpretation. Impossibly stupid league sometimes.
- Just an absurdly brutal watch. Anyone who stuck with that for all 60 minutes deserves an award. And the Capitals need to apologize to their netminder.
- Three power-play goals for the Senators. A lot of things were bad, but the penalty kill looked absolutely and utterly clueless. It’s just way, way, way too easy to get into the zone against them. I don’t know why the Capitals sink so far back and let easy zone entries become inevitable.
- Burn the tape, but also that’s two games in a row of not being anywhere near good enough.
The Capitals will have a much-needed full day off on Sunday, return to practice on Monday, and then travel to play the Dallas Stars on the road on Tuesday night.
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