As the late Jerry Reed once sang, when you’re hot, you’re hot. And right now, Jakob Chychrun is hotter than hell in the summertime. The Caps’ defenseman delivered in the clutch in Washington’s Black Friday home game against the Toronto Maple Leafs, snapping a 2-2 tie with a ripper from the slot with 3:56 left in the third period.
Chychrun’s goal gave Washington its first lead of the afternoon, and Tom Wilson’s late empty-netter accounted for the 4-2 final as the Caps improved to 6-1-1 in their last eight games and 6-1-1 in their last eight home games.
After shaking off an early bad call and spotting Toronto a 2-0 lead, the Caps won it by sticking to their process and playing disciplined and patient game.
“As the second [period] went on, I thought we started to get back to our game and take it over,” says Caps center Connor McMichael. “You look at the shots, I think we controlled the majority of the game and had a lot of great chances to score. And thankfully in the third, we were able to find a few.”
In a first period wholly bereft of television timeouts, the Caps and Leafs played 11 minutes and 10 seconds without a whistle, and there were only 11 face-offs taken in the in game’s first 20 minutes.
The Caps appeared to have scored the game’s first goal just 21 seconds into the contest when Dylan Strome swatted a puck that was straddling the goal line into the net. Alas, the stripes quickly waved it off.
The official email explaining the reason for the goal not counting reads as follows, in its entirety: “The Referee informed the Situation Room he blew his whistle to stop play before the puck entered the Toronto net.”
That sounds like a fancy way of saying he messed up. And no word on why he did so, naturally.
“I think the disallowed goal early got us a little bit on tilt,” says Caps coach Spencer Carbery. “It was frustrating, right? You feel like your start is picture perfect; you score on the first shift, and then it gets called back, and in that way. If it’s goalie interference, it’s different. But the puck is sitting there, so guys were really frustrated with that.”
With Strome’s “goal” off the board, it was the Leafs that struck first; they took a 1-0 lead on their first shot on net of the afternoon, Morgan Rielly’s short side shot from the bottom of the left circle at 3:07.
Early in the second, seconds after the Caps failed to convert on the game’s first power play, Auston Matthews made a sublime feed out of the corner to Matthew Knies in the slot, and the latter buried it at 2:49 to double the Toronto lead.
By this point of the game, it didn’t seem like the Caps’ afternoon. But they stuck to their process, and gradually took control of the contest.
McMichael added to his recent string of strong performances on Friday, finishing off a lengthy offensive zone shift by burying a rebound at 13:18 of the second period, a big goal that came during a lengthy stretch of Washington domination. The Leafs didn’t have a shot on net over the final 11-plus minutes of the second and the first two and a half minutes of the third.
Toronto netminder Joseph Woll entered Friday’s game with a 4-0-0 career record against the Caps, and for most of the afternoon and early evening, it looked as though he would add to that total.
With 6:44 left in the third, the Caps pulled even. One area where the Caps excelled on Friday was puck recoveries in the offensive zone. When Strome’s shot was blocked, he went behind the Toronto net and retrieved it, feeding Alex Ovechkin on the left side of the ice. Ovechkin spotted Anthony Beauvillier just off the right post on the weak side, and the captain fed him perfectly for the tying tally.
A few minutes later, Chychrun hopped on the ice. He missed the net by inches on the far side on his first try, but again the Caps retrieved it, and McMichael sent it from high in the zone to Ryan Leonard in the left circle. Leonard issued a perfect tee-up, and Chychrun’s one-timer gave the Caps their third straight win.
They couldn’t have done it without Thompson, who had a tricky afternoon. Early in the third, he had gone more than 14 minutes without facing a shot, but virtually everything he faced thereafter was a high danger opportunity off a top Toronto player’s stick. And Thompson, who earned his 10th victory of the season, stopped them all.
Thompson stopped a Scott Laughton breakaway in the first, but he was at his best late when the game was on the line. He made a key stop on Matthews’ backhand big from the slot early in the third, and less than two minutes later he hung with and stopped John Tavares on a breakaway resulting from a turnover at the Toronto line.
Probably his biggest save of the game was a glove snare of Knies’ shot from the slot with 32.6 seconds left in regulation, a bullet of a shot that was ticketed for the top left corner of the cage.
“Talking with Chucky [Lindgren] – I feel like we always have great chats – either every intermission or TV time out, and that's kind of how we felt the last couple of games here,” says Thompson. “You know, Tampa, Winnipeg, and [Toronto], you're not seeing a lot of consistent shots. But you know when they do get shots on net, we feel like they're Grade A's, and it definitely keeps us on our toes.
“But mentally, me and Chucky talk about it all the time, we’ve just got to find a way to stay in it and keep giving our team a chance to win.”
At day’s end, this was one of those games the Caps deserved to win, but for most of the contest it appeared as though they would not do so. They stuck to the process, kept doing the things they’d been doing all game, and got rewarded in the end.
“Obviously an unfortunate start with the goal being called back,” says Chychrun. “But I thought we still played well for most of the game, especially in the [offensive] zone. I think we generated a lot.
“I think it's important to not get frustrated when goals aren't going in. If you're generating chances and getting looks, I think that's most important on the process as well. Carbs talks about it all the time, and our process was well, and we get rewarded for it later on in the game.”
Chychrun has scored in five straight games, he leads all NHL defensemen with 10 goals, and his 10-game point streak (seven goals, six assists) matches a franchise record for defensemen.
The Caps head out on the road for a weeklong four-game trip on Saturday, and the finished the homestand with a flourish.
“I think we were the better team,” says Wilson. “We deserved to win, but hockey doesn’t always work out that way. It was nice to get it done, and we just stayed with the process. We deserved it, and I think we got rewarded late. Nice to beat those guys, and finish off a good homestand.”
