The Washington Capitals came out of the locker room, revved up their engines and ran over the New York Rangers. The Caps outhustled, outhit and outscored the Blueshirts, winning 3-1.
For the first half of the game, Washington steamrolled the Rangers. The Blueshirts didn’t know what hit ‘em.
Rangers Henrik Lundqvist got run over twice (with no penalty called either time), and Alex Ovechkin ran over everybody (but especially Marc Staal).
Lundqvist (25 saves) was the only thing keeping the game close.
The Capitals scored a crazy, flukey goal to take a 1-0 lead in the first. The puck ricocheted off the crossbar, off the top of the glass, back down off the net, off Lundqvist’s head and then bounced off Brooks Laich’s stick into the net. You won’t see that again.
Later in the period, Washington scored another controversial goal, when Tom Poti (ouch) put in a rebound after the goal post was dislodged from its mooring. The play was reviewed, and the goal was upheld, because the net was not completely dislodged.
Lundqvist was furious, and argued the call. If there were any dirt around, he would have kicked it at the ref, ala Lou Piniella-style.
Washington completely dictated the flow of the game and even had the referees on their side. Penalties should have been called when they ran over Lundqvist, they had too many men on the ice, which wasn’t called, Blair Betts was crosschecked in the face, which wasn’t called, and they even had an icing mysteriously not called.
Something fishy is going on in D.C., but with all that, the Rangers picked up their game in the second period.
They finally got on the scoreboard in the third on a power play goal by Aaron Voros. It was his first goal since he scored in Detroit weeks ago. And it deflected off Poti’s stick and into the net. I think we’ve seen that before.
The Blueshirts had two golden opportunities to tie the game in the last period, but couldn’t come through. Chris Drury made another great play while killing a penalty and was awarded a penalty shot. But goalie Brent Johnson poked the puck away with his stick while Drury was making his move to make the save.
With two-and-a-half minutes left in the game, the Rangers had a power play but they couldn’t take advantage. Washington added an empty-netter, and New York went on to lose.
Things didn’t look good from the start for the Rangers, and they could never fully recover.
Next game: Monday against the Oilers.
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