The Washington Capitals won a much needed game on Thursday and they continued their good momentum on Saturday night in front of the home crowd of Capital One Arena against the NHL’s newest franchise the Seattle Kraken.
The Caps won 5-2 in good fashion. At 11:30 Evgeny Kuznetsov passed the puck to Alex Ovechkin who fed it to Tom Wilson. Wilson crashed the net going backhanded style basically flying like Bobby Orr for his 18th goal of the season.
34 seconds later a blast from the Ovi office by Dmitry Orlov made it 2-0. It was Orlov’s second straight game scoring and his ninth of the season as Nic Dowd and Nick Jensen had the assists.
The Kraken got on the board at 16:56 from Joonas Donskoi. 2-1 was the score after one as the Kraken led in shots 10-6 in the opening period.
58 seconds into the second period Colin Blackwell tied it. The Caps answered with a power play goal and kudos to them. The power play has gotten better lately. It came at 11:48 from Conor Sheary on a rebound off a shot from either Ovechkin or Wilson, they both got the helpers.
The Caps led 3-2 after two and 13-9 in shots in the second. In the third, the Kraken led in shots 12-6 but it would be the Caps who would put the game away.
First it was Ovechkin on a shot from the office 47 seconds into the third on another power play, their second PPG of the night. It was assisted by John Carlson and Nicklas Backstrom. It was Ovechkin’s 34th of the season and 764th of his career. He’s two away from tying Jaromir Jagr for third place on the NHL’s all time goal scoring list.
At 17:50, Sheary capped off the scoring. It was his second of the night and 14th of the season. The Caps had a good night offensively. And on the power play they went a perfect two for two. Call that progress. Vitek Vanecek stopped 29 of 31 shots against his former team.
Nick Jensen told the media that the team is starting to catch onto the good things going on lately:
"“We’re starting to see some good signs of the kind of hockey we want to play down the stretch here. One of the biggest is work ethic; I think that’s one thing that’s been really good … not everything is perfect right now but it’s going in the right direction.”"
The Caps hit the road for a Canada trip. First up is the Calgary Flames on Tuesday night.