Washington Capitals get crushed by Bruins

The Washington Capitals were looking for their fifth win in a row. Instead they allowed five goals to the Boston Bruins in an eventual 5-1 loss that had some fireworks leftover from Wednesday night.

Brad Marchand struck first for the Bruins at 14:21. 1-0 was the score after one with the Caps leading in shots 12-8. The first period didn’t go without any fireworks as Tom Wilson laid out a hit to the boards to Brandon Carlo. After that momentum was ironically on Boston’s side.

In the second was where all the action was. Wilson and Jarred Tindori dropped the gloves and Wilson wasn’t done yet. The infamous Trent Frederic doubled the Bruins lead at 6:43 just seconds after the scrum. You may remember what Alex Ovechkin did to Frederic the other night where the play got him fined $5K.

Patrice Bergeron made it 3-0 at 9:01 and Marchand added his second goal of the game at 14:58. 4-0 was the score after two periods. The Bruins outshot the Caps 10-8 in the second.

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Nick Ritchie made it 5-0 with a goal 1:05 into the third period. The Caps would finally break through at 13:36 when Nicklas Backstrom set up Jakub Vrana for a goal and what would turn out to be Backstrom’s 700th career assist. T.J. Oshie had the secondary.

5-1 would go on to be the final with the Caps outshooting the Bruins 32-25. Vitek Vanecek got the start in goal but after allowing four goals on 18 shots he was pulled for Ilya Samsonov. Samsonov made six saves on seven shots in relief.

Wilson got into another scrum in the third period, this time against Frederic to the delight of Caps fans everywhere. After the game Bruins coach and former Caps bench boss Bruce Cassidy believed that the hit was dirty and informed the media that Carlo was taken to a hospital.

Cassidy said via Samantha Pell of The Washington Post (subscription required):

“We felt it was completely unnecessary, dirty.”

Jarred Tindori echoed similar statements:

“You can’t have guys taking liberties out there. It was a cheap shot.”

Caps coach Peter Laviolette didn’t think much of the hit just saying it was a “hard hit in the corner”. Wilson wasn’t available after the game. On Saturday morning the league announced that Wilson will have a hearing with the Department of Player Safety for the hit. Date and time TBD.

Backstrom did speak about the golden assist saying that he thought he was going to enjoy reaching the milestone but the loss sort of ruined it:

“Honestly, I lied to you guys before. I said I was going to enjoy [reaching that milestone], and here we are, losing 5-1. I don’t know. It’s tough when you lose a game like this and the way we played, too. Hopefully we can get a win next game so I can think about it more.”

The Caps will look to bounce back on Sunday night against the Philadelphia Flyers in what will be the first contest the Caps will play with fans in the building. Puck drop from the Wells Fargo Center is at 7 p.m.