Capitals defeat Golden Knights on Sunday night in Vegas thanks to Alex Ovechkin hat trick

The Washington Capitals defeated the Vegas Golden Knights by a final of 5-2 at T-Mobile Arena behind a hat trick from none other than 39 year old Alex Ovechkin. The win improves the Caps record to 12-4-1 with 25 points

It was an eventful opening period as two former netminders went head to head. For Vegas they went with ilya Samsonov. For the Caps they went with former Golden Knight Logan Thompson. Speaking of new folks on the Caps, Pierre-Luc Dubois got tripped by Tomas Hertl at 5:13 which put the Caps on the early power play.

Alex Ovechkin made them pay with his 11th goal of the season coming from the office at 5:59. The tally was assisted by John Carlson and Dylan Strome and gave Ovi his 864th of his career to put him 30 away from Wayne Gretzky.

At 12:26 the Caps doubled their lead in the form of a Jakob Chychrun goal for his fifth of the season off a feed from Dylan Strome. In case you missed it, the team should totally do something in regards to his current deal in our opinion.

With eight seconds left the Golden Knights got one past Thompson in the form of a Brett Howden goal. 2-1 Caps would be the score after the opening period with the Caps holding the edge in shots 12-6. The Caps had one penalty as Ovechkin went to the box for hooking but the penalty kill was able to stand tall.

At 2:49 in the second the Caps answered with a goal from Jakub Vrana from the right circle for his fourth goal of the season. Aliaksei Protas and Rasmus Sandin helped there.

At 7:24 the Golden Knights responded with a wrist shot from Keegan Kolesar to make it a 3-2 deficit for them. This came just a mere moments after Ovechkin bailed out Thompson with some good stick defense around the neck.

Then at 17:38, Ovechkin made it a 4-2 game with Matt Roy setting him up to put him 29 away from Gretzky. That would be the score after two periods. Caps were ahead despite being outshot 11-6.

Samsonov got pulled late in the game and by then it was too late for Vegas to mount an attack. Ovechkin put the game away with a backhanded shot on an empty net to seal the hat trick at 19:23 with the assists coming from Aliaksei Protas and Martin Fehervary. He's now 28 away from Wayne Gretzky.