Caps complete road sweep in Utah

Alex Ovechkin scored two more goals, Washington’s penalty kill went 7-for-7 on the night, and Charlie Lindgren made some clutch stops among his 24 saves to lift the Caps to a 6-2 win over the Utah Hockey Club at Delta Center in Salt Lake City on Monday evening.

The win gives Washington an impressive overview of a three-game road trip played over four nights, multiple time zones from home, but the joy derived from the Caps’ excellent journey was tempered by the loss of Ovechkin to an apparent lower-body injury early in the match. the third period after a collision with Utah’s Jack McBain.

“He’s being evaluated right now,” Caps coach Spencer Carbery said after the game. “We’ll know more tomorrow.”

After shaking off a slow start, the Caps scored twice in 10 seconds to take control of the match. Ovechkin scored once in the first and once in the second, giving him five goals in two nights and goals in five straight periods. And by victimizing Utah starting goaltender Connor Ingram, the Caps captain scored another goaltender at his 178th, tying Jaromir Jagr’s NHL record.

Monday’s first period was unique; it was a high event of 20 minutes. Washington yielded the first goal of the game, was shorthanded four times (three of which were minor penalties on the bench) and had a goal taken off the board due to alleged goaltender interference. And yet, improbably, the Caps also took a 3-1 lead into the house after the opening period, a lead they thought should have been 4-1.

McBain started the scoring with a rebound of a point shot at 3:05 of the first. The Caps then needed Lindgren to make a few key stops to keep the game exciting; he made stops on a deflection bid from Clayton Keller and on Olli Maatta in a 1-on-1 situation low before the five-minute mark.

Two minutes after the McBain goal, the Caps went for the kill for the first time. Within a minute of completing the kill, they even scored a Dylan Strome goal. From behind his own net, rookie Utah defenseman Maveric Lamoureux threw a careless backhand feed forward, and it went straight to Strome, high in the Utah ice. The Caps center skated in, went behind the net and put it to Ingram and in, doubling the score at 1-1 at 7:46.

Ten seconds later the Caps took the lead. Nic Dowd won the center ice draw after the Strome goal, and Brandon Duhaime drove deep into the Utah ice before delivering a perfect feed forward to Dowd, who beat Ingram at 7:56. All five Washington skaters touched the puck during that 10-second period.

Seconds after a Washington power play failed to pay off, Ovechkin scored from high on Utah’s ice, giving the Caps a 3-1 lead at the 11:05 mark. At that point, Washington had scored three goals on five shots.

The penalty trouble came late in the first inning when the Caps were whistled for a pair of overlapping “too many men” calls, giving Utah a 5-on-3 manpower advantage for 25 seconds.

The Caps avoided that penalty and appeared to go ahead 4-1 on a John Carlson center drive through traffic with 27.5 seconds left in the first. The on-ice call was goaltender interference; Connor McMichael was at the top of the paint when the shot went in. After taking a timeout to talk it out, the Caps opted to issue a coaching challenge. When things didn’t go their way, they were assigned a third bench minor in less than five minutes.

Washington’s punishing killing and the time remaining in the first influenced Carbery’s decision to contest.

“To be honest, it kind of did; time (and) situation,” Carbery says. “I thought (because it was) at the end of the period that I felt like we could get through those 30 seconds. Then, starting from the center spot (with) a minute thirty (in the second), the power play is broken for them.

“It’s just so hard with these challenges. I feel like no one in the whole league knows what it is, so I felt like at that point a 4-1 lead was worth the challenge, because I’ve seen a few that are called good goals, and I’ve seen some of them did not call. We just decided it was worth the risk to challenge there.

The Caps ended the carryover penalty and ended with a short 5-on-3 early in the second; a trajectory of just 17 seconds. Washington needed just four of those seconds to beat Ovechkin for his second 5-on-3 power-play goal of the season, a patented one-timer from his left point office. Ovechkin’s second of the night gave him goals in five straight periods, extending the Caps’ lead to 4-1 and sending Ingram to the bench. Karel Vejmelka came on in relief at that moment, at 5:38 of the second.

Just past the midpoint of the half period, Utah moved one goal closer when Nick Bjugstad found and buried a rebound of a Nick Schmaltz shot at 11:44.

With Utah on their sixth power play of the game late in the second, Lindgren made a key glove stop on Keller’s one-timer from the right spot, preserving Washington’s two-goal lead.

Lindgren and the Caps needed one more kill early in the third, and minutes later Duhaime ripped down the left side and fired a shot over Vejmelka’s right shoulder from just above the goal line at the 7:30 mark of the third.

Just before the middle of the third, Aliaksei Protas scored his career-high seventh goal of the season to close the scoring. Andrew Mangiapane, who took Ovechkin’s place on the top line along with Strome and Protas, provided the final score, which came at 9:56.

The Caps have now killed 21 consecutive penalty killing missions on the road. The only power-play goal they’ve scored on the road this season came nearly a month ago in their first road game of the season on Oct. 19 in New Jersey.

“I think we should tip our hats to Chucky,” says Dowd. “They looked pretty good and Chucky made a lot of big saves. It’s been said before, but your goalkeeper is your best penalty killer, and Chucky was our best. I think he was our best player overall tonight, but especially on the PK.”

Ovechkin’s first goal was the match winner; it’s the 132nd game winner of his career, putting him within three of Jagr (135) for the all-time NHL high.

While they wait to hear more about Ovechkin’s condition, the Caps can take pride in getting the full six points from this rough road trip.

“A great road trip for us,” says Lindgren. “We find a way to put six goals in the net. It’s pretty incredible, the rate at which we’re scoring now. And yes, maybe it wasn’t the best start for us, but we found it, like good teams do. You don’t accept anything that is below standard, and we have started to address it. And I thought, other than our start, we played pretty well the rest of the game.”