“Washington” lost at home arena “Dallas” – 2:3, but the fans of the capital team still have a reason to rejoice – Alexander Ovechkin continues to update personal records and rewrite the history of the NHL.
The captain of “Washington” repeated the achievement of the legendary Wayne Gretzky and took the sole second place in history NHL by an important indicator.
Ovechkin keeps the Caps afloat
Washington is firmly entrenched in the playoff zone and is unlikely to leave it. The “Capital” have completed the task at least and the remaining games in the regular season can be useful – to fix the game in unequal lineups and allow the team leaders to recover.
The problem with the majority “Washington” almost solved. At the beginning of the year, the team was ranked 27th in the league according to this indicator, and already this month it was on the second line in terms of the sale of excess. And if playing in unequal lineups is no longer a problem for the Ovechkin team, then injuries seriously complicate the life of the Caps. “Washington” has not yet played a single game this season in the optimal composition, each time someone is listed as injured.
So the day before in the game once morest Columbus TJ Oshi left the game with a lower body injury, he didn’t play last game once morest the Carolinas and missed the game once morest Dallas. Also, the “capital” now can not help due to health problems center forward Nick Dowd and defender Trevor Van Rimsdijk.
Despite the obvious holes in the roster, Washington keeps afloat throughout the regular season. In many ways, this is the merit of Ovechkin, who, even in such a difficult season for the team, scores goals with amazing regularity and stamps all sorts of records. So it’s no surprise that Caps fans are happy for their captain even when the team is losing. And today, “Washington” lost to “Dallas” in all respects, but the puck and Ovi’s records overshadowed the defeat.
Ovechkin caught up with Gretzky
Dallas hockey players ran to win the away game immediately following the starting face-off. Already in the third minute of the meeting, the guests took the lead, Alexander Radulov himself distinguished himself in the “stars”. The Russian does this extremely rarely and has not spoiled the public with his goals for a long time – the puck was the fourth for him of the season. And at the end of the period, Roope Hintz ran into the gap and converted a one-on-one exit.
For Washington, the period turned out to be extremely weak. The Capitals had more time to rest following the previous game, but they looked tired and slow compared to the opponent. For the entire starting 20-minute period, there was not even a hint from the Caps players of a dangerous attack, although the Capitals played in the majority three times. However, even in this situation, Ovechkin managed to break another record in the NHL – Ovi became the second player in league history to make 6,000 shots on goal.
Back in 2018, the Washington Capitals captain had the fastest 5,000 shots in league history. Since then, he has only continued to move up this indicator.
The second period began with the removal of “Dallas”, and “Washington” got a chance to close the backlog in the account. Ovechkin did an excellent job with this task – from the transfer Evgenia Kuznetsova Ovi from his “office” delivered a powerful shot and converted the majority.
Thus, the captain of “Washington” for the 12th time reached the mark of 40 goals in a season and caught up with Gretzky in this indicator. In addition, Ovechkin added to the list of goaltenders he scored once morest – Jake Ettinger is the 155th goaltender to pull the puck out of the net following Ovi’s shot.
A few minutes following Ovi’s anniversary puck, Dallas decided to spoil the holiday for the captain and the fans of the Capitals and once more restored the advantage of two goals. The Caps were able to answer only in the middle of the third period – the defender Dmitry Orlov hit the gate with a powerful shot and gave hope to the team. “Capital” did not receive an impulse and might not find the strength in themselves to recoup.
And at the end of the period, “Washington” changed the goaltender to the sixth player to try to organize the last assault in the game. However, instead of a beautiful denouement, the “capital” got another injured. 20 seconds before the end of the match, the away forward Jamie Benn made a dangerous trip John Carlson. The veteran crashed hard into the side at high speed and might not get up from the ice for a long time.
The match itself ended with the victory of “Dallas” over “Washington” – 3:2. Ovechkin had another great match and does not think to stop there. The records of the Russian are all that the Caps fans have following the match. The “capitals” themselves have solved the tournament problem and can afford to play a little on Ovi to help him jump over the records.
