A little bit of Saturday night hockey in Dallas, Texas between two of the NHL’s best teams. A potential Stanley Cup Finals preview proved to be entertaining from puck drop to the final buzzer, if you’re a Dallas Stars fan.
Immediately both teams went to their top lines, power against power to start the game. Great chances back and forth, including a Jason Chimera breakaway that he could not cash in on because he ran out of room and ideas in front of the net to beat Kari Lehtonen. After five minutes of fast play, the Washington Capitals took a too many men on the ice penalty and gave up the games first power play to the home team.
The pace slowed down slightly but both teams kept on getting scoring chances. Nate Schmidt hit the crossbar on a great chance, and then Smiley Schmidt yelled a bad word, that I also yelled at the same exact time.
The first period came to a close with the Stars out-chancing the Capitals. Both Braden Holtby and Kari Lehtonen were good, although Lehtonen was not really tested like Holtby was.
Early in the second period, Justin Williams made a bad pass that was picked off by Ales Hemsky starting a 2 on 1 breakaway on which Mattias Janmark put the puck past Holtby and put the Stars up 1-0 on the Washington Capitals. Former Capital Cody Eakin almost made it 2-0, but Holtby made a marvelous glove save to rob Eakin of a sure goal.
No worries though Dallas fans! Jamie Benn scored minutes later to put the Stars up 2-0. Benn fanned on his first shot, fooling Holtby, and then put the biscuit upstairs on his second attempt. Shortly after, the Capitals got their first power play of the game and it went as expected. They scrambled around struggling to get into the Stars zone and then when they did they couldn’t complete a tape to tape pass to set someone up for a shot to save their lives.
Late in the period, Evgeny Kuznetsov did his famous behind the net pass to Andre Burakovsky, who bought the puck a plane ticket and sent it somewhere that was not into the wide open net. Tyler Seguin got a walk-in chance literally 30 seconds later and made it 3-0 Stars. Hockey is fun.
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The Capitals spent just about all of the second period letting the Stars set up shop in the their own zone and making Holtby suffer. The Stars forechecked harder than any other team the Capitals had played all season, and the Capitals could not find a way to counter it. Holtby was under siege, having to face breakaways, odd man rushes, and Tyler Seguin walking in uncontested.
Oh but it didn’t end there. The Washington Capitals decided it would be a great idea to take two penalties and give the Stars a 5 on 3, on which Tyler Seguin scored again to make the lead 4-0. The second period ended with the Stars scoring four goals in twenty minutes against the number one team in the league. The Capitals guilty feet had no rhythm in the second period. Hooray for Saturday night hockey!
Phillip Grubauer took over for Braden Holtby at the start of the third period, putting an end to the rough night for Braden. At the four minute mark of the third, Alex Ovechkin scored on the power play to cut the Dallas lead to a measly three goals with fifteen minutes to play. Two minutes later after killing a Dallas power play, Justin Williams made things interesting with a goal to cut the Dallas lead to 4-2. Ah the four goal lead, the worst lead in hockey.
With six minutes left in the game, Andre Burakovsky made it really interesting, throwing the puck upstairs on Lehtonen to cut the lead down to one, small, goal. The Capitals had all the momentum now, and they were pouring it on late in the third looking for the tying tally. With the goalie pulled, Tom Wilson hit the post with 32 seconds left in the game.
That’s as far as the comeback went for the Capitals. The tying goal hit the post and that was pretty much it. The Stars had a few chances to score a meaningless empty net goal, but the Capitals put their bodies on the line to make sure that didn’t happen. The effort in the third period was there, and we know for a fact that no matter the deficit, the Capitals will always fight and claw back into the game.
The Capitals reach double digit loses after 54 games. The Capitals will be back in action on Tuesday at home against the Los Angeles Kings.
The Stars seem to like this song a lot, because they played it all game long it seemed.