Caps Score Five in First, Hold Off Blue Jackets for 7-2 Win
Alex Ovechkin Has a Goal and Two Assists
The Washington Capitals are off to a flying start, but their play with the lead lately has been less than ideal. After building multi-goal leads in previous contests and allowing their opponents to come back, on Saturday afternoon the Caps scored five goals in the opening 15 minutes, they took their foot off the gas but staved off a comeback en route to an 7-2 win over the Columbus Blue Jackets.
The Caps came out out of the gate with a dominant first few minutes against a Blue Jacket team that played the night before in Winnipeg. Aliaksei Protas and Dylan Strome connected on tic-tac-toe passing on a mini 2-on-0 with the former opening the scoring less than a minute into the game. Connor McMichael doubled the advantage less than a minute later.
“Felt like we just had some good jump,” Strome said. “It’s nice to score on the first shift of the game, the first minute, and we just kept rolling from there.”
The Caps got the next goal when Andrew Mangiapane scored on a rebound to extend the lead to 3-0 before the period was halfway over. Alex Ovechkin and Nic Dowd scored 24 seconds apart to complete the dominant period. It was Ovechkin’s 859th career goal, putting him 36 behind Wayne Gretzky for the most all time.
The Caps outshot Columbus 8-5 in the first period, but the visitors turned it on in the final 40 minutes, outshooting Washington 31-14. The Blue Jackets got on the board in the opening minute of the second period when a puck squeaked past net minder Logan Thompson. The teams traded goals, with McMichael scoring his second of the game, to make the score 6-2 late in the second period. Columbus had a chance to put pressure on Washington when it went a power play with just 2:02 left in the second frame. The Caps killed it off and went to the locker room with the four-goal lead intact.
“There’s a lot of big moments in that game that could change quickly,” John Carlson said. “[Thompson] stood tall in those moments and kind of always kept it in hand.”
In the third period, Columbus kept pushing but Thompson held his ground and the four-goal lead stayed intact. Strome added a goal late in the third period to increase the margin of victory.
When asked what made this game different than previous games with big leads, Capitals head coach Spencer Carbery said that the process was similar to those games and that the team is still learning to playing with the lead.
“We need to do a little better job of managing our game when you have a lead,” he said. “As much as you want to take some chances here and there, let the chances come to you.”
With the win, the Caps are set for a showdown with the Carolina Hurricanes in the second half of a back-to-back. Coming into Saturday, the teams were tied for first place in the Metropolitan Division. Thompson knows that it’s still early in the season, and the team will keep getting better.
“I knew we weren’t going to let it slip,” Thompson said of the big lead. “We’re getting better every game and tonight we stayed mentally strong. They had a push and we rebounded.”
THE CAPITALS SCORED FIVE GOALS IN THE FIRST PERIOD. 🤯 pic.twitter.com/C89VnjeUfZ
— NHL (@NHL) November 2, 2024
