Capitals build early lead, hold on to defeat Red Wings in return to home ice
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Version 0 of 1. From his perch behind the Washington Capitals’ bench, Coach Barry Trotz stared up at the Verizon Center video screen, watched the replay and exhaled a deep, puff-out-your-cheeks kind of sigh. “Really?” Trotz thought to himself, as if to say, “Not again.” He had already returned from a moderately successful two-game, two-day road trip concerned over his team’s play in Toronto and Philadelphia. Now, after the Capitals allowed a goal in the dying seconds of the middle period, after a massive lead over the Detroit Red Wings suddenly became threatened, Trotz’s worry seemed to grow. But upon greeting his players at intermission, those concerns quickly faded. Trotz might have once felt anxiety knifing through the locker room, spread across panicky faces, had this happened in October or November. Yet Saturday night, before the Capitals sealed a 3-1 victory at the official midway point of their maiden voyage under Trotz, their bench boss only saw confidence. “Earlier in the season, when that would have happened to us, you would feel a tension in the room,” Trotz said. “I didn’t feel any tension in the room.” Trotz may still find room to pick apart the Capitals’ 12th victory over their past 17 games, after they got outshot by 10 and lost the overall even-strength attempt battle by 33, but with goals from Troy Brouwer, John Carlson and Joel Ward, Washington bulldozed the Red Wings from the first shift. It received 26 saves from Braden Holtby, including 15 during the third period. And by the final horn, the deflected shot from Red Wings defenseman Jonathan Ericsson that crossed up Holtby and made Trotz fret with 11.9 seconds left before the second intermission never mattered. “In a lot of areas, there’s not so much panic in your game,” Holtby said. “You can’t force play. That’s poise. Patience with the puck, because guys can hold onto it longer, a little support on the ice. It’s a good thing to see. We’re moving in the right direction.” Full-throttle, the Capitals have clung to the NHL’s best winning percentage since Dec. 4 and stitched together the Eastern Conference’s best road record. Now, at the outset of a three-game stay at Verizon Center, came the challenge of improving a lackluster mark here in the District. Fifty-three seconds after the puck dropped, a furious opening shift from forwards Brooks Laich, Eric Fehr and Ward opened the homestand with fireworks. Once Detroit forward Tomas Tatar scooped the puck over the side boards and took a delay of game penalty, the Capitals’ power play exploited an egregious gaffe and struck first. Corralling a dump-in behind his net, Red Wings goaltender Jimmy Howard tapped the puck onto his stick then inexplicably left it alone as Brouwer tore around the corner. Brouwer snatched the puck, cut inside and jammed it inside the post. His sixth power-play goal of the season — and 12th goal overall — put Washington ahead 1-0. The celebration soon hushed once everyone looked back into the crease, where Howard was keeled over, face down on the ice. When he had tried to recover and stretched across the crease, his legs split and his groin stretched. He stayed down for several minutes while trainers rushed to his side and emergency medical technicians arrived pushing a stretcher. The crowd applauded as Howard was wheeled away into the Detroit locker room, where he would receive treatment and remain until the game ended. Bogged down in a quagmire of skittish ice, slippery passing and a general lack of offense, the Capitals and Red Wings lurched through the second period needing more than 11 minutes to reach double-digit shot attempts. But Washington took advantage of its slim chances, first when Carlson, enjoying his 25th birthday, scored even faster into a period than Brouwer had. The passing sequence that put the Capitals ahead 2-0 came straight from an instructional video. On the rush, Nicklas Backstrom — snubbed from his first career all-star appearance, much to Trotz’s chagrin — passed ahead to linemate Andre Burakovsky, who spied Carlson trailing and dropped the puck into the slot. Carlson’s one-timer zoomed at ice level and through the legs of Howard’s replacement, Petr Mrazek, before he dropped into his butterfly. After the Red Wings needed almost 11 minutes to record their first shot attempt upon returning from intermission, Ward sped into the offensive zone, watched a pass hop off his ankle, settled the puck down and whipped a top-shelf goal past Mrazek. The Capitals had surged ahead, 3-0. Trotz’s eventual concerns proved unfounded. The lead was safe. The panic never came. “Guys were just going about their business, kind of getting to be robotic and systematic, which is great,” Laich said. “It means it’s automatic.” |