This. Team. Is. Fun.
Your Washington Capitals were back at it again on Tuesday night, this time against another Stanley Cup favourite — the Colorado Avalanche.
However… One team looked like a serious Cup contender in this game, and it was not the Avalanche.
The Caps buried the Avs on this night, skating circles around them for 60 minutes, outshooting them 40-27 despite having fewer power plays (more on this later), and ultimately winning the game 6-3.
The Caps’ top line of Alex Ovechkin, Evgeny Kuznetsov, and Tom Wilson was – quite simply – electric once again. They went head-to-head against the Avs’ top line of Andre Burakovsky, Nathan MacKinnon, and Mikko Rantanen – widely considered to be one of the best lines in the entire NHL – and they won the matchup by a wide margin, scoring 4 goals and making the Burakovsky-MacKinnon-Rantanen trio a combined -14 on the night. Ouch. It was probably one of the most dominating performances ever put forth against that Avalanche top trio. Ovi-Kuz-Willy, for their part, were a combined +10. Some nights, plus-minus doesn’t tell the whole story… But on this night, it certainly did.
SCORING SUMMARY:
1-0 Caps: Kuznetsov takes a ridiculous stretch pass from John Carlson, one that only Carlson or prime Bobby Orr could make. Kuz then proceeds to split 3 Avalanche defenders to walk in and score. Just an all-around beautiful goal. Hang it in the Louvre. Assist to Carlson.
1-1: Kuz makes an oopsies on the power play, and the Avs score shorthanded.
2-1 Caps: Nick Jensen – who is good now – keeps the puck on a 3-on-1 with Ovechkin & Dmitry Orlov and fires a very confident wrist shot that beats Darcy Kuemper far side, post-and-in. You have to have some serious balls to take the shot yourself when you’re on a 3-on-1 with Ovechkin, man… Because you know if Jensen missed, the groans from Capital One Arena would have been palpable. We are chasing Wayne Gretzky’s all-time goals record, after all. But, Big Dick Nick makes it count, so all is forgiven. Assists to Orlov & Wilson.
2-2: Darren Helm – who is apparently still in the league (I really didn’t know?) – scores to tie things up despite his Avalanche being outshot 21-8 at this point. Boo.
3-2 Caps: Anthony Mantha with a slick move to go skate-to-stick, and he scores his 100th career goal in The Show. Congrats, Mo! Assist to Lars Eller.
4-2 Caps: The Caps start to pull away as Kuznetsov scores his 2nd of the night after another dominating shift by the Caps in the Colorado defensive end. Assists to Wilson & Orlov.
5-2 Caps: Best 4th line center in the league Nic Dowd gives the fans pizza with his 1st goal of the young season. Assists to Jensen & Carl Hagelin.
5-3 Caps: Garnet Hathaway appeared to give the Caps a 6-2 lead with an empty net goal, but it was called back as he was called for slashing on the play. The Avs would score on the ensuing power play. Lots of boos for the referees ensued.
6-3 Caps: BUT IT WAS OBVIOUSLY MEANT TO BE as Ovechkin would instead get the empty netter for the Caps, sealing the game with a wrist shot that sailed approximately 180 feet into the open Avalanche cage. Career goal No. 734 for the Great 8, who is hotter than a ghost pepper at the moment. Assists to Wilson & Kuznetsov.
FINAL SCORE: Capitals 6 – Avalanche 3.
This game was really all about the top lines for each team. We’ve mentioned how the MacKinnon line struggled to contain the top line for the Caps — all told, Kuznetsov finished with 2 goals and an assist, Ovechkin had another goal, and Wilson had a 3-assist night. And that’s really been the story of the Caps’ top line through all of these first 3 games — Ovechkin already has 4 goals/6 points, Kuznetsov already 2 goals/6 points, and Wilson already 4 points.
And frankly — if this is the Evgeny Kuznetsov we are going to get this season, then we are going to be in very good shape for another run at another Stanley Cup. We haven’t seen this Evgeny Kuznetsov since 2018. We’ve heard from Ovechkin, and from head coach Peter Laviolette how proud they are of Kuz for how hard he worked this offseason; and it appears as though that hard work is going to pay off. I’ve mentioned countless times over the past 3 years how Evgeny Kuznetsov is the X-factor that takes this team from being a very good team to being a Stanley Cup-winning team… We saw it in 2018. When Kuz plays up to his potential, the Caps have 2 No. 1 centers in he and Nicklas Backstrom. That’s enough to put any team over the top, especially when you have the elite wingers that Washington has.
I mean, Backstrom was the Caps’ leading scorer last season, and he hasn’t even played yet this season due to a hip injury, and look at how good they still look — just imagine when Nicky gets back.
All in all, the Caps have already racked up 12 goals so far in just 3 games, and are outshooting their opponents by a 100-75 margin, a +25 shot differential — which is a pretty large differential for only having played 3 games.
In short — they’ve been dominant, and last night’s game against Cup favourite Colorado was no different.
It was quite clear all night that the Avs could not handle the big bodies of the Caps on the forecheck – or anywhere else on the ice, for that matter – so that will be something to watch for the Avs going forward. The Eastern Conference has a reputation for being quite a bit tougher than their Western Conference counterparts, so it’ll be interesting to see how the Avalanche measure up, should they make it to a Stanley Cup Final in the next few years.
But we already knew the Caps were the bigger, stronger, tougher team. What surprised me most in this particular game – given the Avs’ reputation for being among the fastest teams in the league – was how much faster the Caps looked than the Avalanche. They were skating circles around the Avs. And we wrote about it previously, but this Caps team – after finally getting a full training camp under Peter Laviolette – looks so much faster than last season’s team. Some of that, obviously, is due to the injection of youth – the Caps had 4 rookies make the squad this season – but a lot of it is also due to the way that Laviolette likes his teams to play. Everything is done at a fast pace, there’s no waiting around. They’re fast on the backcheck, they’re fast in transition, they’re fast on the forecheck — and they’re racking up goals – and wins – because of it. It’s fun to watch if you’re a Caps fan, not fun to play against if you’re the opposition. Just ask Nate MacKinnon last night.
One final note on this game: The shots were 40-27 in favour of the Caps, who had the puck quite literally all game long — and yet the power plays were 4-3 in favour of the Avalanche. At one point the shots were 21-8 in favour of the Caps, but the power plays were 2-1 in favour of the Avs. This simply should not happen, not with the way that this particular game was so heavily dominated by one side. Do better, refs.
NEXT UP: The Caps take on the New Jersey Devils, 7pm EST/4pm PST, Thursday in NJ. This game will actually be properly televised, none of the ESPN/Hulu bullshit. Hooray.
