Honda Center had far too many empty seats on Friday night, and a lot of people missed an intense hockey game pitting a pair of the NHL’s four division leaders. Concluding a rugged four-game road trip against Anaheim on Friday, the Caps never trailed but suffered a 4-3 shootout loss at the hands of the upstart Ducks.
Mason McTavish’s shootout goal ended the night and the trip for Washington, which forged an impressive 3-0-1 mark on the journey.
“I thought we fought hard,” says Caps coach Spencer Carbery. “I thought tonight was pretty good. You knew we didn't have our fastball, but we were gutting through the game against a really good hockey team, against a fast team, against a team that can give you all sorts of issues defensively. So, I give our guys a lot of credit. At the end of a trip, you could tell we didn't have – like I said – our best, but we found a way to get a point.”
Both goaltenders needed to make big saves early; Logan Thompson thwarted Leo Carlsson from the right circle on the game’s first shift, and Ville Husso stopped Ryan Leonard’s breakaway bid less than a minute later.
Anaheim’s speed was evident early, but the Caps were able to strike first on an offensive zone shift just before the midpoint of the first period. After a Trevor van Riemsdyk right point shot was blocked in front, Justin Sourdif retrieved it and teed up Tom Wilson in the slot. Wilson whipped it home from there, giving the Capitals a 1-0 lead at 9:29.
When Jacob Trouba put a high, hard hit on Leonard behind the Anaheim net late in the first, Leonard got up slowly and went off for repairs. Trouba was boxed briefly while the officials looked at replays; they eventually decided the hit was clean and there would no penalty on Trouba, just a Jakob Chychrun roughing minor for coming to Leonard’s defense.
“What I don't like about that specific hit is that he's engaged with another player,” says Carbery. “When Leno's engaged with – I think it was [Radko] Gudas behind the net, or whoever he was engaged with as he was going around the net – he's being checked. So to me, that's now a player looking for someone that's in a vulnerable spot. I think those are, those are dicey hits. I remember those were back in the ‘90s, guys would look for a guy coming around the net and a winger would go down and try to, you know, catch a guy coming around the corner. I just don't like that part of it.”
Wilson asked Trouba for a fight later in the game, but a question isn’t really a question when you know the answer before you ask it.
“I don't want to get too much into it,” says Wilson. “I honestly haven't slowed it down and watched it and analyzed it. I mean, I could see it coming. [Trouba] knows exactly what he's doing. Kid’s in a vulnerable spot, and obviously Leno is pretty banged up.
“I asked him to fight. He said, ‘No,’ and we'll leave it at that.”
Although the Caps were able to kill off the two-minute minor, Anaheim’s Cutter Gauthier slipped a slot shot past Thompson to tie the game at 18:16 of the first, just a dozen seconds after Chychrun exited the box.
The two teams continued to trade goals through the second period, though the Caps had to kill off three more penalties, including a pair on Chychrun. Washington had gone a dozen games without going shorthanded more than three times, but they were faced with five penalty killing missions on Wednesday in San Jose, and five more on Friday in Anaheim.
Washington regained the lead – but only briefly – at 6:06 of the second when Ethen Frank buried a rebound of a Rasmus Sandin point shot. Ducks defenseman Pavel Mintyukov tried to clear the rebound, only to put it right on Frank’s tape, so the goal was unassisted.
Thirteen seconds later, it was all tied up at 2-2 when Ross Johnston tipped a Gudas point drive behind Thompson at 6:19.
Aliaksei Protas was next on the board; he fired a rebound of a Matt Roy center point drive past Husso at 7:38, giving the Caps a 3-2 lead they would carry into the late stages of the period.
Alex Ovechkin hit the post on the pocket play in the second, one of several shots from both sides that rang iron on the night. Husso made probably his best stop of the night when he flashed the left pad on Ovechkin’s attempt to beat him on a rebound with about five minutes left in the period.
That save looked bigger when Beckett Sennecke scored from the top of the paint at 17:59, tying the game at 3-3 just five seconds after a face-off in the Washington end.
The Caps and Ducks played through a scoreless third, and both teams had a couple of good looks in overtime, and both goalies ensured that a shootout would be needed. That’s where the Caps’ splendid road trip fell short of perfection, but pulling seven of eight points and playing 245 minutes of hockey without ever trailing on the scoreboard is an impressive team feat for a road weary team that suffered some losses along the way.
John Carlson and Charlie Lindgren didn’t dress on Friday; both are out with upper body injuries. Carbery says Leonard is also “going to be out.”
Washington practice goalie Parker Milner signed a contract to back up Thompson tonight. Milner never made it the NHL, but the 35-year-old former Boston College star is beloved in the Washington room, so having him take a “rookie lap” and be on the bench meant a lot to both Milner and his teammates.
“It's surreal,” says Milner of waiting in the tunnel to come out for warmups. You're staring at the greatest goal scorer to ever play the game, and you're about to go on the ice for an NHL game. So it's really hard to describe, but just tried to be super present, appreciate the moment, and appreciate the guys that I was around to help me do it.”
