Washington Capitals blank Devils

The Washington Capitals swept the back to back home series with the New Jersey Devils in impressive fashion in the second game with a 4-0 shutout. Alex Ovechkin scored twice and Ilya Samsonov was a brick wall in net.

Ovechkin and Evgeny Kuznetsov entered the zone passing the puck to each other until Kuzy set up Ovi with some nice cross ice sauce. Ovechkin slam dunks it in at 5:58.

At 11:50 the Caps doubled their lead. Conor Sheary found Tom Wilson. Wilson fed the puck to Nicklas Backstrom for a slam dunk of his own in front of the net. It was Backstrom’s 13th of the season which is more goals than he scored last year. Age is just a number.

2-0 was the score after the opening 20 minutes. The Caps were up in shots 9-8. The second period was scoreless as the Devils outshot the Caps 11-5 but Samsonov stood tall stopping everything in his path.

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At 7:13 in the third the Caps made it 3-0 when Wilson fed Sheary from the boards. Sheary sniped it in for his seventh goal of the season.

Finally it was Ovechkin who put a bow on this game. T.J. Oshie fed Kuznetsov who found Ovi in his spot right in the office. For Ovechkin, he continues his hot streak and now has 17 goals on the season and 723 in his career.

After a slow start to the season that included being on the COVID-19 protocol list, he’s scored 10 goals in his last 10 games. Conor Sheary told the media after the game via Tarik El-Bashir of The Athletic:

“…he took it to heart when everyone was saying he had a bad start. He’s probably the hottest guy in the league now. It seems like every shot he takes is dangerous. It’s just amazing how many opportunities he’s able to get and how many goals he’s able to score.”

Caps head coach Peter Laviolette added:

“He’s a guy that takes a lot of pride in his game and a lot of pride in scoring goals…just the way things went down to start the year, it maybe didn’t get on track quite the way he wanted at the beginning of the year which probably fuels him even more.”

The Caps hung on from there with a 4-0 win with Samsonov turning away all 24 shots he faced. The Caps outshot the Devils 17-5 in the third period and 31-24 overall.

The Caps are off today but return to action tomorrow afternoon when they host the New York Rangers in what we hope is the last home game without fans.

With their two straight wins, the Caps are now in first place in the MassMutual East Division with a 22-7-4 record with 48 points. The Caps are 14-2-1 in their last 17 games, by far becoming one of if not the hottest team in hockey.