WASHINGTON (AP) — Just like during the season when they were the top team in the Eastern Conference and one of the best in the NHL, the Washington Capitals got goals from Alex Ovechkin, superb play in net from Logan Thompson and scoring up and down their lineup in the first round of the playoffs.
It again was a winning recipe, finishing off the Montreal Canadiens in five games to advance to face the Carolina Hurricanes. Not panicking when they lost Game 3 at Bell Centre or when they were trailing late in Game 4, the Capitals relied on what has worked so well for them for months to win a series for the first time since the Stanley Cup run in 2018.
Jakob Chychrun, who scored a goal in Game 5, said, “We’ve done it all year.” They were able to keep the good vibes going by maintaining consistency.
“Just not getting too high or too low on the bench, just kind of keeping it pretty even-keel,” said Dylan Strome, who led Washington in scoring with nine points after leading the team in scoring during the regular season. “We’ve been battling hard all year. We’ve done a great job of not letting one loss build into two, into three and things like that. We’re a resilient group.”
Spencer Carbery, who’s the favorite to win the Jack Adams Award as coach of the year in his second season in charge, is less concerned about the losing streaks that are inevitable and more impressed by his team’s ability to not let bad things snowball within games.
“(When you have) adversity in a game where you’re trailing, where things haven’t gone your way, where you don’t have your best, where you’ve given up or made a huge mistake that’s ended up in the back of your net and being able to overcome that, I think the experience of that, you get better at that,” Carbery said. “It gives you more belief. It gives you more confidence that you can find your way out of it.”
The Capitals have come a long way since getting swept as the eighth seed by the Presidents’ Trophy-winning New York Rangers a year ago. Reflecting on that defeat, Carbery thought the Rangers took the Capitals’ belief away from them goal by goal and game by game.
Perhaps that’s why players shrugged off the idea of a turning point against Montreal.
“I think we had control of the series from Game 1,” said Tom Wilson, whose big hit on Alexandre Carrier helped turn the tide in the victory that put the Capitals up 3-1 in the series. “We take Game 1, take Game 2, obviously a bit of a crazy Game 3 and then right back to business. There’s ups and downs in a playoff series, but I think for the most part we were pretty focused and we were pretty diligent and we went out and got the job done.”
On the verge of clinching a playoff series on home ice for the first time since 2015, the Capitals did not make it easy on themselves in Game 5. They gave up eight of the first nine shots, relied on Thompson to make big saves and did so again when they were outshot 10-2 at the start of the third period.
When Brandon Duhaime put the puck into an empty net with 25.6 seconds left, they were able to exhale and recall what made them successful in the series and the season.
“We don’t give up,” Strome said. “Even when things don’t go well, like we were down 8-1 in shots to start the game and we kind of just find a way.”
They also found different ways to win. Ovechkin scored his first career playoff overtime goal to take the series opener; Thompson shined late to make it 2-0; big hits sparked a comeback to win Game 4; and there was no letup from the Capitals in their first chance to close out the Canadiens.
On Wednesday morning, defenseman Rasmus Sandin espoused the values of practicing patience.
“We just have a system that everyone believes in, and even if the result doesn’t come in five, 10 minutes or so, we have a very tight group and we’re fighting until the end,” Sandin said. “We just believe in each other a lot.”
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AP NHL playoffs: https://apnews.com/hub/stanley-cup and https://apnews.com/hub/nhl
