This game, from start to finish, was about redemption: Redemption for the Caps after their 4-1 shellacking just last week, and Alexander Semin‘s personal redemption after being benched last game.
On all accounts, ‘Operation Do Better This Time’ was a success. The Caps were able to win 4-3 in overtime and Semin had one of his strongest games. He finished with a goal, a +/- rating of plus-2 and 18:25 minutes of ice time, including 2:21 on the power play.
For the Caps as a whole, this was a well-played game and a good effort building off of the last victory.
Jason Chimera scored his seventh and eight goals of the season. Last season, he only recorded 10 and with only 20 games played this season, unless he falls off the face of the earth, it looks like he’ll surpass that total.
“I’ve just always had it, was just going to wait until my late or mid-30s to get it going, you know. I don’t want to peak too early,” Chimera said of his recent scoring touch.
As for the rest of the team, Hershey bears call-up and rising fan favorite, Dmitri Orlov, recorded his first NHL point in only his second game. He also had a killer hit on Blake Wheeler and proved that he had no problem roughing things up a bit.
Former defensive tandem John Carlson and Karl Alzner both led the team with three blocked shots each.
Birthday Boy Nicklas Backstrom had a solid birthday game as well. While he didn’t net the game winner in overtime like he did four years ago when he turned 21, he did score what would have been the game winner had the Jets not tied up the game and sent it to overtime. For Backstrom, that’s his seventh goal of the season.
“Win and, uh [goal], it’s always good on birthday,” Backstrom said.
But despite the success, Backstrom doesn’t have any big plans to celebrate his big day.
“No, I’m just going to have dinner with my friends and go home, sleep, practice tomorrow. Sounds fun, huh,” he said.
For those wondering about returnee Eric Fehr, the new Winnipeg Jet had one shot, blocked one shot, played 9:22 minutes and was a minus-1 after being on the ice for Backstrom’s goal.
However, there is still plenty of love to go around. After interviews were over, Alex Ovechkin went over to talk to Fehr and the two seemed to be just as good friends as ever. For Fehr, this was only his second game this season.
