Capitals Impress, Look to Future in First Week

Siegenthaler has 17:23 ATOI and Fehervary has 14:29. Fehervary also got some playing time with John Carlson against the Hurricanes. T.J. Oshie and Jakub Vrana, who signed on for two more years this summer, have each scored twice so far. Nicklas Backstrom hasn’t done much through two games, but that’s no cause for concern, especially with Alex Ovechkin still comfortably amongst the best goal scorers in the world and Carlson creeping closer to his first Norris trophy. In short, the Capitals look good.

Bashing the Blues

To open the 2019-20 NHL season, the former defending cup champions collided with the current defending cup champion St. Louis Blues and won in overtime, 3-2. The Capitals started off looking sluggish, allowing a goal just 53 seconds into the game and then going down 2-0 on powerplay clapper from Alex Pietrangelo.

Then the Capitals woke up. Who else but Ovechkin scored the first goal of the Capitals season with a casual beauty, sending Bouwmeester aside with a fake shot and then a quick flick of the wrist and it was behind Binnington. Dmitry Orlov managed to get quite a bit of lumber on a slap shot in the second period, making it even. From there, Holtby and Binnington traded saves and they headed to OT, where a relatively harmless looking Vrana wrister found twine and the Capitals were able to dampen the Blues’ banner-raising celebration. 

Holtby looked good in his first appearance between the pipes against the Blues, but the 30-year-old is coming into a contract year and the Capitals have young gun Ilya Samsonov waiting in the wings. Samsonov replaced Phoenix Copley as Holtby’s backup, and Copley had done a decent job at it the year prior. They wasted no time getting Samsonov his first start, thrusting him into action in game two on Long Island. It was now Samsonov time.

Capitals Beat Islanders in Home Opener

The Capitals outskated the Islanders for just about the entire game, as it was the Islanders’ first game of the season and they were more rusty. However, Samsonov looked cool, calm, and collected throughout the entire 2-1 victory. He collected 25 saves. His lone goal allowed was a pinball ricochet into the net off of three of his own guys. The final touch being summer acquisition Radko Gudas, who tapped the goalie in his pads after the goal as if to say “tough luck kid.” It was his only goal allowed, the only thing stopping the young Russian from still having not been bested in the NHL.

I’d feel worse for him if it weren’t for the Islanders hitting two gut-wrenching posts and Carlson absolutely bailing him out on a Brock Nelson wrap-around that had Samsonov completely out of the blue paint. Samsonov posted some pretty great numbers in the KHL during his time there and could be looking to get the Capitals to move on from their long-time netminder.

Can’t Close Out the Canes

The Capitals established a 2-0 lead going into the third period, but an early Gudas interference call and some beautiful passing by the Hurricanes powerplay. From there it was only a matter of time before the Hurricanes tied it up, and they did about halfway through the period. The Capitals powerplay troubles continued into OT, where they went 0-6 on the game before conceding a goal to Jake Gardiner on a two-on-one where both Holtby and Backstrom appeared to be playing the pass, leaving Gardiner free to waltz in and blast one by Holtby’s shoulder.

The story of the game for the Capitals has to be their inability to score up a man.

You can’t go 0 for 6 and then expect to have the outcome you want…so then it comes down to looking at why it was happening. I thought their penalty kill worked extremely hard and were able to come out with more puck battles than we were.

Capitals head coach Todd Reirden

Fortunately the Capitals will have a three-day rest to fine-tune their powerplay before facing off with the Dallas Stars at home once again on Tuesday, 7 p.m. EST.

Follow us @Hockey_OTH to keep up to date with more hockey content and explore our NHL page for more articles!

Discuss this article and more in the Overtime Heroics Forums!