Well that was fun.
The Washington Capitals stomped the division rival New York Rangers 5-1 on Wednesday night, in what was the season opener for both teams. It was a sellout crowd at Capital One Arena — the first time that’s been allowed in over a year and a half due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Let’s recap the scoring plays first, and then we’ll discuss more in depth:
- 1-0 Caps: TJ Oshie got the party started on the Caps’ 1st power play of the night (and season), depositing the loose change after a nifty pass from Alex Ovechkin. Assists to Ovechkin & Evgeny Kuznetsov.
- 2-0 Caps (almost): Lars Eller with a sweet pass to Nick Jensen for a beautiful one-timed rip to the top shelf behind Alexandar Georgiev. A gorgeous goal, which was eventually called back on a Coaches’ Challenge for being a hair offside. That’s Gary Bettman hockey, baby.
- 2-0 Caps (for real this time): Justin Schultz scores from the point on the power play. Assists to Kuznetsov & Ovechkin.
- 3-0 Caps: 24 seconds after Schultz scored to make it 2-0, 19-year-old Hendrix Lapierre lived up to the hype and scored his 1st career NHL goal in his 1st career NHL game. It was an all-around beautiful goal, and the celebration was truly something to behold. Assists to Oshie & Conor Sheary.
- 4-0 Caps: Some guy named Ovechkin scored a goal again. I hear he does that a lot. 731 times, to be exact. Enough to tie him with Hall of Famer Marcel Dionne for 5th place on the NHL’s all-time goals list. This one was on the power play. Assists to Anthony Mantha & John Carlson.
- 4-1 Caps: The Rangers finally get a power play goal after a soft call against Dmitry Orlov. Vitek Vanecek shutout ruined. Boo. Although that was really the only negative thing to happen in this game. Chris Kreider with the goal. I don’t care to list the assists because this isn’t a Rangers blog.
- 5-1 Caps: Again, some guy named Ovechkin scored a goal again. Yawn. This time it was shorthanded, and it was the 732nd goal of his career, catapulting him past Marcel Dionne for sole possession of 5th place on the NHL’s all-time goals list. And you should really catch the replay of this goal in particular, if you happened to miss the game. It was a thing of beauty, with Kuznetsov sending what can only be described as a hell of a pass off of the end boards in the Rangers’ zone for Ovechkin to skate into, and the 36-year-old Ovi quite frankly made 21-year-old highly-touted Rangers’ defenseman K’Andre Miller look as if he was the one who was 15 years older than Ovi, blowing past him and deking to his backhand before lifting the shot past Georgiev. The celly was also epic, but that’s par for the course with Ovi. Assists to Kuznetsov & Trevor van Riemsdyk.
Goodnight New York.
So let’s discuss.
Firstly, let me just start by saying that the New York Rangers’ obsession with Tom Wilson is starting to get a little bit creepy. The Rangers were talking a whole lot of smack heading into this game, promising a whole lot of revenge against Wilson and the Caps. But here’s the thing… Didn’t this so-called “revenge match” already happen last season?
*Checks notes* Yes. Yes it did.
So allow me to take you to school for a minute here, NYR. Even if you had a problem with what Wilson did last season, there’s a well-known “code” in the NHL which dictates that Wilson was to answer the bell in the next game against your club. And please notice the singular-ness of that phrasing there — the next game. Not the next unlimited games from now until infinity until our fragile Ranger manhood is restored. Wilson already answered the bell last season. Multiple times, in fact. But just because he won all of those fights handily, just because he made you look stupid again, does not mean that you get to call a Mulligan and try again the next time you face the Caps, wash rinse repeat forever. It was dealt with already, it was settled last season, the hockey world will always remember that the Caps won all 7 fights and the game. Move on.
Okay. Now that that’s out of the way.
Ryan Reaves did play in this game, which I mention only because he was so invisible out there that I feel like most of us were checking our NHL apps on our phones sometime near the end of the game to confirm whether he had actually been a healthy scratch or not. But nope, he was playing. He played 11 whole minutes (approximately double his usual ice time), and not 1 of those minutes was memorable in any way. Great offseason, Rangers.
It was actually 1-0 Caps before Reaves even got a shift. It does help if you can trust your “enforcers” to actually be on the ice.
The Rangers did appear to be trying to play this one tough — which was just fine with the Caps, who were more interested in playing hockey and who have more than enough skill to pounce on all of those times where the Rangers took themselves out of position chasing the big hit. That was actually a pretty big theme of this game: Rangers stupidly chase the big hit, are out of position because of it, Caps promptly score.
Discipline was also a problem for the Rangers as many of their newly-acquired “tough guys” kept finding themselves in the penalty box, usually while Tom Wilson laughed at them. The Caps’ power play went 3-for-6 (50%) on the night.
And the PP for the Caps actually did do the gentlemanly thing and try to warn the Rangers right off of the bat, scoring on their 1st power play of the game. But the warning went unheeded.
The Caps have the NHL’s best power play over the last decade-plus. You would think it would be common sense for the opposition to want to put it on the ice as few times as possible, but apparently not.
Sammy Blais – the Rangers’ “other” new “tough guy” – did a particularly bad job with the concept of discipline, taking 3 minor penalties in about 10 minutes of ice time. Another genius offseason acquisition by the NYR higher-ups. He also at one point got dropped by Trevor van Riemsdyk. I’m not quite sure how to say this, but if you’re getting dropped by Trevor van Riemsdyk, then you probably aren’t actually very tough at all.
So between Reaves causing an abundance of scoring chances against by taking himself way out of position to chase hits, and Blais taking an abundance of stupid penalties — that’s 0-for-2 on the Rangers’ new tough guys so far. Let’s check in on the 3rd guy:
Ah, yes, there’s Jarred Tinordi with a massive giveaway in front of his own net. The trifecta.
But those Rangers’ intangibles, tho.
On Tom Wilson Watch meanwhile, Big Willy killed off an entire Rangers’ power play basically all by himself with no stick in his hands, after his stick had broken in half. The broadcasters were singing his praises. Cue Rangers fans’ heads exploding everywhere.
Wilson also drew a penalty after using his speed to create a breakaway for himself and deking Georgiev wide, forcing the Rangers’ defender Jacob Trouba to take a penalty in order to stop him from scoring. It probably should have been a penalty shot, honestly. But our power play was clicking at 50% anyway, so it really didn’t matter.
And speaking of power plays — the Rangers’ power play was bad. They probably could have used a guy like Pavel Buchnevich. Hah.
Anyways, 3 highlights of the game for the Caps:
- Alex Ovechkin putting up 2 goals & 4 points after being a game-time decision due to a lower-body injury.
- The rookies. Hendrix Lapierre scoring his 1st NHL goal, and Martin Fehervary just being a total badass playing on the top pairing alongside John Carlson.
- Vitek Vanecek. He was quietly superb in this game, allowing just the 1 power play goal and turning in a .958 save percentage.
BONUS HIGHLIGHT: Ryan Reaves getting laid out by TJ Oshie, then by Dmitry Orlov, and then by Nick Jensen all in the span of about 7 seconds. He was wincing afterwards on the Rangers’ bench. Luckily for him, since he barely plays, he’ll have plenty of time to recover.
The Caps’ next game is Saturday, 7pm EST/4pm PST, at Capital One Arena against the Tampa Bay Lightning.
