Washington Capitals sweep back to back road trip with win in Columbus

The Washington Capitals concluded their back to back road trip with a 4-3 win over the Columbus Blue Jackets on Friday night. They head into Sunday night’s contest against their rivals the Pittsburgh Penguins with an 8-2-4 record with 20 points. That’s tied with those jerks the Carolina Hurricanes for first in the Metropolitan Division.

Sean Kuraly gave the Blue Jackets a 1-0 lead at 2:33 in the first. The Caps answered at 10:19 from none other than Alex Ovechkin with another milestone goal. It was number 742 to put him past Brett Hull for fourth place all time in the NHL’s goal scoring list. It was assisted by Evgeny Kuznetsov and Tom Wilson. The goal was a snipe from Ovechkin as he just entered inside his office.

1-1 would be the score after the opening period. Shots were also even at 10 apiece. Ovechkin spoke after the game on the historic goal:

“Means a lot. When you start playing and you came to the NHL you never felt like you were going to be in that position with those names but it is a special moment for me, for my parents, my brother, my wife, kids … it’s pretty huge”

24 seconds into the second period, the Caps would answer with Garnet Hathaway‘s first of the season. It started with a turnover forced by Lars Eller. He found Axel Jonsson-Fjallby and he set up Hathaway for the give and go. AJF gets his fist NHL point with that assist.

At 7:23 Ovechkin fed it to Eller and he found Hathaway alone for the breakaway goal for his second of the game. That 3-1 lead would be short lived however as the Blue Jackets answered with goals from Sean Kuraly at 8:11 and Gustav Nyquist at 8:33. 3-3 would be the score after two with Columbus leading in shots 12-8.

It was an intense third period that included a penalty kill by the Caps. Shortly after it was Conor Sheary that would give the Caps the 4-3 lead. It was assisted by Dmitry Orlov and Nick Jensen and it came on a snipe from the left face off circle. The Caps outshot the Blue Jackets 10-7 in the third but were outshot 29-28 overall. Ilya Samsonov made 26 saves for an .897 save percentage.

Sheary spoke on the importance of secondary scoring:

“Ovi is going to score, Kuzy is going to score, that top line is playing really well for us and if we can get the bottom nine going and keep scoring these big goals I think we can roll together some wins here”